Murhedd's Valley
by D.K. Archer
Summary: Peter has gone missing, and an old horror story may hold more truth that fiction. Based on the Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirate's characters
1. Rain and Patches

**Murhedd's Valley - chapter one**

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Drip...drip...drip...drip... 

A silvery sewing needle flashed back and forth, in and out of the rough fabric like a polished, burrowing worm. The water falling steadily into the drip pan set the rhythm, and Wendy's little fingers danced nervously over the gutted seam; her head bent down in concentration and her thin lip sucked in between her teeth. 

In...out...in...out... 

drip...drip...drip...drip... 

On the ground above her something lowly went scuttling across the rain fed puddle that had collected between the trees, blocking, just for an instant, the infernal muddy crack in the bedrock with it's slippery, water bloated feet. In the home beneath the ground, the steady dripping missed a beat. Wendy fumbled a stitch and the needle jammed it's single toothed head into her thumb. 

She was startled more than hurt, but she did yelp for it, and instinctively stuck the pad of her thumb between her lips and sucked at the tiny wound. In the basket above her head she heard Michael shift and kick in his sleep before settling again to dream. Wendy glared up at the thin crack in the ceiling and decided it had done that with malicious intent, just to make her prick herself. It was silly, and she knew it, but she thought it none the less. 

Curly looked up at her dully from his seat at the enormous fireplace. He was a pathetic site, with his skin mottled grey and red (which was better than it had been when he'd dragged himself home, when he had been a solid and unhealthy grey under his dark skin pigment) and shivering under the bear skin cloak that had somehow made it's way here from the indian village a few weeks ago. He had scared Wendy nearly to death when he had come tumbling down the tree (being alone in the underground house was far more unpleasant when it was raining and damp, even if she wasn't really alone) but she had quickly seen that he was cold and wet and stripped him of his torn shirt and trousers, and set him down by the fire to dry. It was a very motherly reaction and she would have been quite pleased with herself had she been told this. 

"Did you hurt yourself?" he mumbled, his brain still feeling cold. 

Wendy shook her head and looked down at the mending shirt again. Curly seemed content enough with that and stared at the flickering fire once more. 

Drip...drip...drip...drip... 

It felt like she'd been waiting for the boys to come home since the beginning of the world. 

Drip...drip...drip... 

Actually, it felt like she'd been waiting for PETER to come home since the beginning of the world. 

It had started raining sometime late in the night before. Peter had gone missing that morning. Wendy had been afraid that he and Tinkerbell had drown somewhere, and as evening fell into night with no sign of the boy, the others had decided to go out looking for him. She'd tried to convince them that it was unhealthy to go flitting about in the drowning rain, in the dark, but they had left anyway, for children have a marvelous way of thinking they know better than their mother, even when their common sense agrees with her. She didn't know how long they had really been gone now, though before Curly had come stumbling in she had managed to sew patches into three pairs of trousers and darn all their socks. 

Sometimes she most sincerely missed little things like mantle clocks. 

Of course, it didn't really matter what time it was, since there was no one to put to bed except for Michael, who had already fallen asleep on the floor and left it to Wendy to lift him up to his basket. It wouldn't be healthy to put Curly to bed yet, not until he stopped shivering anyway, but she was sure that the moment her boys came home she was going to make every one of them change out of their wet clothes and get into bed this instant. Peter would stay up, of course, for he would be eager to tell her about whatever mad adventure had kept him out so many hours of this dismal day. Or perhaps he wouldn't tell her anything at all, and simply wish to stay up because he was Father and it was his right. 

The girl knew that Peter and her boys were coming home, that it was simply a matter of time before they would be back in their underground house and sleeping soundly in their beds. She knew this only because it was inconceivable for them not to come back; after all, they were neither redskins nor pirates, not little birds nor house mice, nor beetles on their backs on the sidewalk; they were none of the things that died. They were boys, and boys only were naughty and stayed away for long times, making their mothers WORRY that they had died. They never really did. 

Though there had been Frederick, at the public school, that had stayed home with dyptheria and never come back. But they had been told he had simply gone away. No one had said that he had died. 

Tonight she worried, though; a little bit different of a worry than what she scolded for because it was what mothers were supposed to do. Perhaps it was only because of the rain, or the smell of the mud in the walls, and the terrible little worms that stuck their heads out from between the tree roots and wiggled. It might have been because of the drip drip dripping of the water, setting her on edge. 

It was funny...she almost remembered something from that morning, something from only a few hours after Peter had left. The walls of the little underground home had twitched. It wasn't a big twitch, or even a notable one, but a few minutes later the west wall of the little home had poured with worms; worms and moles and little crawly beasties she hadn't even realized could burrow. She had made a big show of shrieking and standing up on her sewing stool so they couldn't touch her, and the Lost Boys had rushed to her rescue giggling and posing. The worms and crawly things just slipped down into the floor and kept on their way, but the moles stayed above panicking long enough for the lost boys to catch them up by their fat little middles and chase each other with them. They had all been promptly bitten, of course, and she had almost forgot about the worms in the rush to mend and scold them. 

She twiddled the needle in her fingers and set it down against the fabric, falling into the rhythm again. She only had a few inches left before she would reach the hem and could double back again to tie the knot. 

In..out...in...out... 

Funny....the rain almost sounded like footsteps up above. She stitched to the hem and turned the seam.   


The sky bled with streaks and blurs of fairy light, far away through the rain that made the Twins blink and squint to see, though their other senses were agreeably lost to the water. It didn't make sense for so many to be about now, especially not in this weather. Unless they were looking for Peter, too. It was hopeless to try and find him, when they could hardly see a foot in front of them, and it was a simultaneous and unspoken decision to turn tails and tell Nibs that there had been no sighting on this side of the crooked mountain (but no one had expected they would find Peter there, since the bulk of the Crooked Mountain was poisoned by a volcanic vent near the peak, which bled down sulfur and killed everything on the northern side. All that survived it was a pocket of thick, thorned briar, sitting at the very base of the poison, that gladly lapped up every deadly trickle and grew the stronger for it.) 

Of course, it could never be so simple in Neverland as to just give up and go home. With their hands clasped between them so they might not loose each other in the dark, the Twins turned about and were promptly struck by a mess of wet feathers, protesting bird flesh, sewn leaves, hinged sticks, and a basket made from woven grass. The Twins shouted and swatted it away, and the whatever-it-was fell a good dozen feet to land on the sticky sulfuric mud below them. 

"What was--" 

"--that?" 

Keeping firm hold of each other they dropped the remaining distance to the ground and landed on either side of it, bending low to examine the mess that now flopped, shouted, and...glowed? 

A miserable bird with a bright red beak, about the size of a cat, flipped to it's feet in the mud and flapped it's sticky wings, splattering the wet boys with filth. It was wearing a raincoat made of glossy leaves and the snapped remnants of a tiny ballooning basket hung from hinges on it's belly. Beside it, glowing fierce fuscia at the moment and shrieking angrily, a familiar looking fairy was scraping the mud from her silver dress and stamping her little silver shoes. 

"Why don't you watch where you're going!" she shrieked, looking incredibly pathetic as the rain drenched her into a muddy little scrap of girl. 

"What do you mean, look where we're going?" 

"You hit US!" 

The bird puffed it's wet feathers "We most certainly did not! You flew right into my path and you know it!" 

"We did not!" 

"You did!" it insisted. "And now look, the poor Queen in all wet and muddy!" It put a wing out over her head like an umbrella, but with his raincoat ruined the feathers just stuck together in clumps and didn't keep her very dry. 

"You're the Queen?" the black twin asked in confusion. 

"Queen Mab?" his brother pointed. 

"Of course I am, didn't anyone ever teach you who's-who of the ruling class, you giant ingrates!" she shouted in a shrill voice. "And now look what you've done! I'm down here in the MUD and I'm WET and this stupid island isn't even part of my kingdom!" 

"Then what are you--" 

"--Doing here? Are you-- 

"--looking for Peter?" 

Her glow flashed to a slightly calmer color for a moment. "Peter? You mean the boy who played the pipes back at the garden? No, why would I come all the way from Kensington just to look in on the piper!" She turned greenish now "My sister Titania is away from Small Monday Island; she and her King are on diplomatic relations somewhere off in the Orient! When something went wrong in Neverland she asked ME to look in on it because I was closer than they were!" 

The Twins frowned. "What went wrong in Neverland?" they asked. 

The Queen of the western world's fairies stamped her silver shoe again and crossed her arms "I won't speak another word until you oafs pick us out of this mud and take us on our way! You owe Captain Partlet and I for crashing us in the first place!" 

Though they were still insistent that they had not been the ones responsible for the crash, they collected the poor creatures from the mud, the black twin carrying Captain Partlet under his arm like a football and the smaller one holding the Queen between the shields of his hands. 

"Careful!" Partlet wailed, kicking unhappily against the twin's hip. "Don't rough her! She's had a very strenuous day!" 

The twins half expected the Queen to snap at him for being an overbearing twit, but she seemed to like being fretted over, and she calmed a bit at his discomfort. The twin stuck an eye to the space between his thumbs and watched her wring the water out of her hair. 

"Do you mind?! She's a lady!" he spouted again. The black twin had a sudden urge to squeeze him. 

"Just tell us where you need to go--" 

"--so we can get back to the others!" They said, feeling the cold and wet and becoming irritable at the Queen and her transport. 

"Just a moment!" The lady began to search through the pockets hidden in her skirt folds, then when that seemed to fail, to reach down her bodice. Her hands came up empty. 

"Oh! I must have dropped it! You! The big dark oaf!" she shouted, standing up between the twin's hands and pointing at his brother. "Put down the Captain and get down in the mud! I've lost my sister's compass!" 

"We can get you a new compass at Small Monday Island!" 

"We know the directions, anyway." 

"No no no!" she shouted, her glow getting red again. "It's no ordinary compass, you boob! It's been enchanted to point to where there's trouble on the island, and I NEED it to know the direction I'm supposed to go! Captain Partlet!" 

"My queen!" he stiffened to attention. 

"Get down from there and start going through the mud!" 

"Yes, your majesty!" 

He kicked and squirmed until the boy let him go, and landed with a wet thock in the mud. The rain was beginning to lessen a little, and it was easy to see him flopping through the sulfuric muck, dragging his toes and digging with his beak. After a few moments he snapped his head up, something small and dirty hanging from his beak. 

"Oh, lovely!" the queen squealed. She put her arms out to him and the black twin obligingly lifted up the Captain so he could deliver the trinket. The queen grimaced and wiped the muck off it with her delicate little hands. It was a pretty little thing, if it would have been cleaner, made of gold and tiny diamond chips on a red silken cord. She peered down at the dials and pointers and wrinkled up her nose. 

"It say's we're almost on top of it!" She rubbed the glass with her thumb and adjusted one of the dials. "Captain, look around! See if you can spot anything!" 

He stuck his long neck up and swiveled his head like a periscope, but it wasn't that hard to see what was wrong, not when the rain was dying down now. Both the twins peered about and stopped at the same spot. 

"Well? What is it?" she demanded indignantly, finding herself in an impossible position to look and see. The white twin lifted his hands to the right direction, and it became quiet. 

"...Has that always been there?" she asked hopefully. 

"No." 

The muddy mountain side petered and dropped, studded by stones and undissolved sulfur, down into the pocket of briars some twenty feet below them. It was no longer a small pocket, though. It had opened in the rain, wide like a mouth studded with a hundred million thorny teeth, into a thick and crooked valley. The stone was slick with water and freshly cleaved, and stuck into the wall was a carved granite slab, covering a door to who knew what. It had only recently been shoved aside and awkwardly replaced. 

"Captain Partlet?" The Queen wavered. 

"Yes, my queen?" 

"I don't think this is good ...."   


Wendy felt so domestic right then. Michael was sleeping so softly above her, and Curly had dropped off by the fire (though he was far too heavy for Wendy to get into the bed, so she let him stay). She sat on her little sewing stool, picking over the little tears and scratches that had afflicted his poor garments. She was sure he had run into the branches of a tree when he was flying, from the little bits of leaves and bark that clung to his wet clothes and stuck out at odd angles from his drying hair. He would never admit to that, though. Poor Curly. 

Her ears pricked with interest as the sound of the drip pan began to slow. Maybe the rain had stopped; what a lovely thing that would be! Perhaps the boys would come home, now, too. 

drip........drip.............drip.....{scritch}.....drip.........drip........ 

Skritch? 

Wendy looked up from the torn trousers and frowned. It sounded like a mouse, or a rat. 

...{skritch}..... 

That time she could pinpoint it. The noise was coming from the top of the entrance trees; like something was trying to get down. A racoon? She stood and pressed her ear to Peter's door. It was silent for a moment until there came a scrabbling on the wood, and the sound of a body sliding down the entrance. 

Peter was home! 

She let a joyous cry and threw open the door, but in an instant her voice rose to a startled shriek, as a jumbled mess of white skin and rough fabric and yellowed linen shirt came tumbling down to land with splayed legs on the ground at her feet. Curly was awake in an instant and at her side (though he looked about as threatening as a cotton ball standing there in his drawers). Whatever it was that had landed at their feet blinked and looked about himself with smudged black eyes. 

His confused silence was hard to break, and in the few seconds it stretched the pair could get a good enough look at him to know he wasn't right. It was a boy, maybe nine years old, maybe ten; his skin was white like an old woman's and his hair was a dull and unremarkable color, something like a mouse. He seemed to be...missing...in places, they could find no more appropriate way to state the sentiment. His left ear didn't match his right, the left having been stripped of the rim and the lobe, with a patch of shiny, naked scalp above it, a few inches high and as wide as a finger. 

Curly hunched down his shoulders, ready to attack him if he had to. "Who are you?" 

"M...Mur....." the boy paused and frowned, and decided to change his answer. "Jason." That pale brow furrowed and his lip peeled back. Something seemed to shift in his demeanor and suddenly he was alive, animated and his face split into a grin, revealing white teeth worn down to the nerve. 

"My name is Jason." 


	2. In which a villian becomes apparent

Murhedd's Valley -- Chapter two   


The clouds had spent themselves and begun to drift, and through the ruffles between them the wide silver plate that was the moon shone through, like a mirror covered in lace. It was fortunately a fat moon tonight, and it's misty glow reflected brightly off the water to create a jagged maze of light and textures along the ground. The dampness still clinging to the Lost Boys skin was just enough to let them show, and Nibs counted heads to see they were all there. 

"Toodles...Slightly...John...." Nibs frowned "Where are the twins?" 

"They're not back yet." John said. "Didn't you send them by way of the mountains? Maybe they found Peter there." 

"Then why didn't they come back with him here? I told EVERYONE that we were to meet back here in an hours time, and it's been bloody well more than an hour." 

"Only slightly. We should go after them. They've probably found an adventure and we're back here, not having it!" Slightly protested, taking off his hat to snap the water from it. Toodles flinched as the spray of droplets struck his face. 

"We should go home. The twins can take care of themselves, especially if they've found Peter." The round boy commented. Nibs looked at him for a moment. 

"You, Slightly, and John go back to the tree, I'm sure Mother Wendy has worried herself sick by now." 

"Where will you be going?" John asked. 

"To the mountains to find the Twins!" 

Slightly straightened indignantly "Now wait a minute! Why should you go off adventuring while the rest of us just go home and sleep? If you're going after the Twins then I'm going, too. They've probably been captured by pirates or something." 

"In the mountains?" Nibs raised an eyebrow "Why would the pirates be in the mountains?" 

Slightly's ears turned red "Maybe not pirates then, but at least lions or bears, or monsters. Something worth the going." 

"The only place you're going is home. I'm sure they just got lost or something. I'll find them, and maybe Peter, and then I'm sure we'll be back again within the hour." 

"But it's not fair only you should go." 

Nibs puffed proudly "Of course it's fair. I'M second in command, and with Peter gone, I get to decide who goes where. And you're going home." 

"Nibs!" It sounded a little too close to a whine for his pride, and Slightly crossed his arms and stuck his chin to his chest, while the red on his ears spread closer to his nose. Nibs smirked and turned in the air. As his body disappeared into the darkness he shouted over his shoulder "Go home!" 

"Arrogant creep." Slightly muttered. 

Toodles only sighed. "Come on then. Lets go home." 

"Fine. But Nibs had never said we had to stay there."   


The white skin of Jason looked terribly thin when he sat next to the fire, when all the little veins and vessels swoll with blood from the new warmth, and the fine lacings of blue and red rose to the surface. It looked as though the muscle and bone had been fitted over with parchment in lieu of skin when he had been born (Wendy had a very strange image of a skinless infant like the drawings in the teacher's anatomy book, and the doctor, baffled, tying it into butcher paper to keep it wet) It was almost like the skin on the back of her mother's legs, which had never seen light any day of their lives. 

Curly hovered at the edges of where the crisp heat extended from the hearth, looking frightfully silly as he tried to appear imposing, since he had forgotten about his state of undress for the moment. Jason shrugged the bearskin cloak over his thin shoulders and looked about himself a moment. He was a ragged little thing. His hair was thinned and seemed to have agreed on a general length of about his shoulders, though it jagged up and down carelessly and split into frays at the base of his skull. There wasn't any new growth there. In fact, except at certain angles and certain patches, his pinkish white head could be seen through the strands. 

Old women had hair like that. And old women wore shoes like that; ladies boots that buttoned up the side in a fashion some many years out of date, though cracked extensively on the ball of the foot and sopped with water and mud. Faded boys stocking popped from the lips of the boots and became red velvet breeches, that were worn of most of their fuzz and stained black at the knee. Though he was bunched over in a geometric little curve of the back Wendy could still see that the clothes were not made to fit. The lower set were too small for him and the top half too large, as the yellowed linen turned to a mess of bunches and creases under the cloak, too large to tuck in. It covered his hands to the finger tips and the cuffs were cut neatly off and stitched back up in a whipstitched hem. 

"What do you want?" Curly demanded, earning him shot glare from Jason before the boy looked to Wendy, his face suddenly filled with a theatric expression that hadn't been there before. 

"N-nothing." he stuttered. "It's just that it was cold, and it was raining, and I wanted to get out of the rain... I didn't know the house was here. Just the dry tree." 

He frowned innocently as though the cold had gotten to his brain. Wendy was, at this point in her life, still a generally trusting creature, and accepted that answer at value. She scurried around to find a rag to help dry his dripping hair. "But what were you doing out in the rain in the first place? What are you doing in Neverland at all?" She snatched up a cleaning rag and knelt down beside him, taking a fistful of his thin hair in the cloth and squeezing. The boy winced and the specialized muscles over his arms and back could be seen to rise even under the cloak. She was, of course, oblivious to this. 

"Neverland, is it now? That's a fitting name for this place." The boy muttered a little bitterly through clenched teeth. He stared at her hands like they were fleshy spiders hovering above his head. Wendy pulled the cloth away and moved to squeeze the water out of it before moving on to the next fistful. She paused, frowned down at the cloth, and then registered with discomfort that no small portion of his hair had come out in her hand. 

"Well? What about Wendy's question?" Curly pressed, wanting more information. He did not get an answer, however. Both parties before him stared down in absorption at the hair filled rag; Jason's mouth fell open a bit. Wendy suddenly dropped it and scooted back on her knees uncomfortably. It remained there like a dead rat on the floor. 

Jason's mouth quivered the slightest as one covered hand went experimentally to his skull. He raked fingers down his wet locks and stared with obvious dismay at the clumps that came out between his digits. Wendy felt unsure of what to do (something she hated more than anything, for she saw it the sign of a bad mother) Instead of doing anything for him, then, when he began to blink quickly to cover shiny eyes, she stood and went to the sewing basket and put away the needles and patches and pins nervously. She couldn't help but glance towards the open tree. She wished Peter were here. 

Wendy rested her hands on the basket lid and chewed her pink lips, unwilling to turn around for reasons she couldn't place but she knew were shameful. She felt those black eyes resting immobile on the back of her dress, and seconds ticked by without movement from any creature in the house. Curly looked back and forth between them, trying to place quite what was going on, but his mind couldn't interpret cleanly the twitchy expression that became more malignant with passing time over Jason's face. 

It was Michael who broke the silence. The boy had slept through the noise and the conversations (boys in the underground house learned how to sleep through anything) but the sudden uneasy quiet set his little mind to waking. He yawned and stretched, and Jason's head snapped up like an alerted elk towards the hanging basket. 

"Whats that?" he asked shortly, his mouth pulling in a the corners. Wendy turned and saw the boy and her little brother look up and down at each other. 

"Thats Michael." she replied in equal curtness. 

While Michael was normally and agreeable child, he certainly wasn't pleased when Jason fished his arms into the basket and hauled him out by the ribs, holding him at length in front of him with a little too much ease for their sizes. Wendy made an shrill noise and fluttered her hands helplessly. "Oh! Put him down! Jason, put him down!" she pleaded. She tried to take Michael from him as a first time mother with a newborn might, but he turned his back to her and examined Michael like a toad. 

"Stop!" Michael protested with a whine. Jason had flipped him onto his belly and was running two finger along the sides of his spine, frowning in concentration, before flipping him again to check his teeth. Michael bit him. 

It was only a game of inches that Curly lunged and caught the little boy before his head struck the ground. Jason did not even seem to care that he had dropped him, on his head, none the less: his attention was quite easily taken by the little red circle of teeth marks on his finger. Wendy had had enough. She didn't care how lost he was or how cold and wet the rain had made it, she wanted him out of her house this very instant, and as mother it was her right. She got up into a fluster before him, arms jutting out from her hips and cheeks flushing a notable shade of red, and told him to take the cloak and get out and don't come back again unless he learned some decency. 

From some boys this would have earned a cowled little exit; from others, a display of anger and indignance. She wasn't quite sure what reaction came out of Jason. All she knew was the sting of something cold against her face. 

And it was silent.   


Far across on the other side of Neverland, the twins had descended down the thorny briar to poke and prod at the massive granite slab. It was slick with a sheen of the sulfur filled mud that even the rain hadn't been able to wash away completely. Queen Mab pulled a pair of minute little glasses from her skirt and stuck them low on her pert little nose. It was quiet for a moment. The twins almost thought the knew what the carvings meant until she gave a theatrical little huff and shrieked "Captain Partlet!" 

"Yes, my queen?" Her bird replied, head whipped up at attention. 

"It's all still covered in mud! I can't see what it means!" she complained. "How can I tell my sister what we've found if I can't even tell her what it means?" 

"I'll take care of it, your majesty!" the captain replied, seeming genuinely happy to be doing so. He squirmed until the twin dropped him and stood, shook himself, and paraded with the wet little squishes of his feet in the muck to the top of the slab. He looked ridiculous, soaked down to the skin and his little green raincoat hanging off him in pieces, but he puffed his chest forward and stuck out his beak, and looked very nearly captain-like before them. 

"Men! Er, I mean, Boys! As subjects of the island of Neverland and it's notable king and queen, Oberon and Titania, you are hereby deputized to aid her Royal Majesty Queen Mab of the British Isles, who acts in official capacity by the authority of King Oberon and Queen Titania of the Island of Neverland! From this moment until our investigation is concluded, you are to act in accordance to the orders of Her Royal Majesty and Myself!" 

The Queen clapped her hands sweetly and the captain puffed even more, a pleased blush staining his cere red. The Twins were not as impressed by his speech. 

"What does--" 

"--Deputized mean?" 

The captain blinked. "Deputized? Er, that means you have to do what we say." 

"Why?" 

The Queen huffed "Because he's Captain Partlet of my flying brigade and he said so!" 

"Oh." 

"Okay." they said. And it was strangely as easy as that. The captain looked confused for a moment before coming to and giving his first order. 

"Deputy Twins!" he shouted, addressing them as one person for lack of a better way. "I order you to clean this slab of granite so that Her Royal Majesty may better examine it's inscriptions!" 

"Yes, sir!" they replied, deciding to play along. A game was a game, after all. It wasn't a very fun game, though. In only a few minutes they were both covered to their ears in sticky mud, and the whole while the captain snapped encouragement to them "Use your back, boys, aye, there's the ticket!" or "Quickly man, for the queen!" Compared to some of the games Peter had made them play this one was a stroll through the daises, though. 

The Queen, meanwhile, for whom all this fuss was being made, was sitting contentedly in the feathers under Captain Partlet's wing: the only dry spot on the whole island. Every now and then she stuck her head out to sneeze, at which point the Captain apologized sincerely for his dust, and went back to bothering the boys. 

In ten minutes, most of the mud had gone from the slab onto the twins, and Captain Partlet declared the job to be done. The Queen climbed out from her dry spot onto the Captain's back, arranged herself, and ordered the captain to walk her up and down the stone so she could look at the carvings. He was happy to do so, and left muddy footprints in the margins as he went. 

"Hmm...." The queen was a picturesque image of pondering from her perch (indeed, in manner classes she had been shown the most effective postures to denote that one is thinking, and that one shouldn't be disturbed). "What do YOU make of these, Captain?" 

That meant, of course, she had no idea what they were, and wasn't allowed to admit it. The captain cocked his head and looked down at the markings with one eye that glistened with Mab's light. 

"I think that ones a duck, your majesty." he said, pointing to a pictograph that was little more than a knot of lines and dots. 

"Oh, yes, with the little beak and that?" she said, leaning over to look closer. It didn't look anything like a duck to either of the twins, but they didn't think they were allowed to say anything about it. The captain pointed to a different one with his toe. 

"That ones a bunny." 

"Uh huh. Oh, look! A kitten!" 

It looked nothing like a kitten. The captain waddled further across the little images until he reached the edge. There was one over there that actually did look something like a nasty old tree, but there was a little metal ring inset below it that he didn't understand. He stuck his beak in the hole, fished it out, and pulled. It was followed by several inches of metal chain. At the Queen's curiosity he waddled backwards down the sloped slab with the ring in his beak until the end of the chain popped out of the hole with a grating sound. The slab began to rumble. Mab let go a shriek and threw her arms around the Captain's neck to keep herself from falling. 

The slab shuddered and rolled upward on a set of hidden rollers. In the space it vacated there was nothing but darkness, and a good three feet's worth of it before it stuck its head against the mud walls of the valley and couldn't move anymore. The slab creaked, whined, and held still. 

"Well!" the queen puffed, though she was obviously shaking. "Captain, take me down to look inside." 

"I most certainly will not!" He said indignantly, defying her orders for the first time. "We have no idea whats down there! It's my duty to keep you safe as well, your majesty, and I won't have you putting yourself in danger when there are perfectly good deputies at hand!" 

The queen looked like she didn't know whether to smack him or kiss him. She decided on neither, and simply sat down and huffed. 

The twins would normally have been all for exploring, but it was, after all, extraordinarily dark in there, and without the moon or Queen Mab's light it would get even darker. The captain looked at them. 

"Well? What are you waiting for?" 

They didn't see how they could refuse, being deputies and all. The Twin's grabbed each others hands, took a deep breath, and tenetivly stepped down into the darkness.   


".......Wendy? Mother Wendy? Slightly, she's waking up!" 

The girl blinked against the light and made an undignified little noise. A head with panda ears was bent down over her face, a little closer than was really comfortable, even at the best of times. She put a hand over her eyes and tried to stop the room from spinning. 

"Wendy, are you alive?" Toodles poked her. "What happened to you?" 

The girl was a little too muddled to answer, but she did prop herself up on her elbows and cast a bleary look about the room. Everything that could be toppled had been toppled, and the soot and ash from the fireplace was smeared about over everything. Curly lay tangled in the bedclothes there in the corner, dusted with ash and face smeared with a crust of blood from his nose. Slightly was trying to untie the knots from about his legs. 

"What...whats going on? What happened to Curly?" she asked shakily. Then she blinked as the initial amnesia of sleep finally left her. Something else was missing from the room. "Where's Michael?" 

The two Lost Boys looked at each other; they hadn't even thought to check for Michael. They stood and turned their heads as though they would see him sitting on the bed or on a shelf. Michael wasn't there. 

Curly groaned and twitched on the floor there, then blinked and sat up, wincing at a rib he thought surely had been cracked. Jason had kicked him after knocking him down. Hard. He'd only managed to get one swing in at the other boy. Then Jason had leaned down and grinned, and something cold hit his face around his eyes, cold like peppermint. Then....then.... 

A hand touched his shoulder and Curly shouted and swung at the body before he even thought about it. Slightly yelped and ducked the blow, and caught Curly around the waist as he fell past to keep him from cracking his skull against the wall. Curly squirmed and swung. 

"Lemme go! I'll kill you, you....you...!" 

"Curly, it's me! Slightly! Stop it!" he heard. It took a long moment to register, then he grimaced, regrouped, and stopped trying to claw at the legs that were, notably, not wearing red velvet breeches. Slightly let go of his waist. 

Toodles had gotten Wendy up on her feet, and she immediately tried to examine the growing bruise on Curly's stomach and wipe the blood off his face. He pushed her off and scowled, feeling incredibly touchy after having his tail pounded by a balding stranger. Fortunately the awkwardness of her attempted fussing did not last long. Slightly spotted something on the hearth and squinted at it. 

"Whats that?" he asked, and pointed. All heads swiveled towards the fireplace, but only Wendy got any meaning from what they saw. Letters were smeared over the stones in crusted messes of charcoal and the blood from Curly's nose. It said, quite simply: 

MURHEDD IS BACK 


	3. Doors also close

Murhedd's Valley - chapter three

  
  


Captain Partlet waddled to the bottom edge of the slab and stuck his head into the hole. He couldn't see anything in the darkness. 

"Well?" he called, and his voice echoed disturbingly. "What do you see?" 

"There's stairs!" The twins called up in unison. 

Queen Mab scooted down Partlet's neck and tried to cling there upside down to get a better look, but her skirts fell up over her head, and she lost her grip. The captain had to catch her by the hem of a slip to keep her from hitting the stone. Her glow turned an irritated and humiliated red as she righted herself in the air, and smacked Captain Partlet ineffectually on the beak for having seen up her skirt. His cere blushed anyway. 

"Ow!" one of the twins yelped from the blackness. 

The captain ruffled in alarm "What happened!" 

"I stubbed my toe!" 

With the echo he couldn't tell which one had spoken, but he supposed it really didn't matter, anyway. 

"All in the line of duty, my boy!" he replied. "Have you found anything important yet?" 

Down below, the twins squatted down on one of the dry stone stairs and felt around with their palms for what the smaller one had kicked. Their fingers touched rough metal, and the fat teeth of gears, up against the corner of the stair. They touched it all over and they couldn't tell what it did, but there was a lever sticking out the top; a lever the exact right size for their hands, and there really are few things as irresistable as that. 

"We found a lever!" the shouted up together. 

Partlet's reply came back hollow from the echo "A lever? For gods sake, man, don't pull it! You don't know what it does!" 

It was allready too late. They pulled. There came the squeal of gears and chains, and the creaking of the rollers up above. Partlet screeched and grabbed Queen Mab under a wing as the slab began to shake. It whined, jolted, and dropped like a guillotine, flinging the pair down into the mud and sealing the entrance with a crash. 

Capain Partlet blinked and struggled to his feet. After a quick check he deemed himself to be in one peice and spread his wing to let the queen out of the dusty little pocket underneath. She came out red faced and stamped her silver shoe in the mud. 

"WHY must EVERYTHING today end with me getting SQUISHED or MUDDY or WET or--AAUGH!!!!!!!" She kicked at the feather that had come loose and stuck in the surface of the mud. Seemingly oblivious to the presence of the Captain of the Flying Brigade she stamped her feet, hopped, pounded her fist against her skirt, and shrieked, for nearly a whole minute. Then, tantrum over, she stood calmly, smoothed the rumples of her dress, and turned to face the captain in a smooth and regal posture. He looked a little shellshocked. 

"Captain Partlet, I want to go home now. My sister can deal with her own terrible little island when she gets back!" 

"But...My Queen, what about the deputies?" 

"Her subjects. Her problem." She crossed her arms and pouted. "I want you to take me home." 

The Captain fidgeted uncomfortably. "But your majesty, those boys were made deputies under the Flying Brigade, which makes them YOUR deputies. We can't just leave them!" 

Her jaw dropped "Are you questioning me, Captain Partlet?" 

Faced with the direct question, Captain Partlet's eyes went wide and he got a look over him that was allover puppydog-ish and extremely uncomfortable. The Queen raised an eyebrow and put her fists on her hips. Partlet whimpered. 

"....yes I am, your majesty." 

The Queen made an indignant little sound and stared at the captain, looking ever so much like a startled goldfish. He shirked down miserably and whined. 

"You....you dare! You dare disobey your queen!" 

"Yes!" he wailed. He gave a little honking sob and sat down in the mud, covering his eyes with his wings and looking allover, entirely, miserable. 

Now, it is a very unusual day for a Queen when she sees the Captain of her Flying Brigade sit down in the mud and cry, and she was terribly pleased that it was the act of disobedience to her that made him do it. She decided that she would be nice and humor him, and let him go off to rescue his little deputies (she did have a streak of decent selflishness in her somewhere), but that she would wait a minute or two before she told him (though that streak was buried very very deep). It really was a fascinating sight, seeing a full grown Captain honking and wailing and sniffling, and when she figured he'd had just about enough she patted him on the beak and he looked up, sniffing. 

"I changed my mind." she declared. "I've decided to let you rescue your deputies first. In fact I..I order you to rescue them!" 

The Captain blinked, then perked when he registered what she had said. He gave a joyous litle yelp and wrapped her up in his wings to hug her harder than anyone had dared to hug the Queen of the Faries before. She winced at the mud in his feathers and squirmed uncomfortably. 

"You, ah, you can put me down now. Captain. Captain!" 

And that was exactly how Nibs found them when he came drifting over the edge of the briar valley, called by it's mysterious newness to investigate, and to find the missing boys.   


The twins had never realized just how dark darkness could be. With the questionable glow of the fairy queen above them they had thought that this, indeed, was darkness; but now their eyes had nothing to receive, and no point of reference to get their bearings on. Their orientation lasted just long enough to wretch the lever back into position, but it did so with no resistance. The mechanism did not reset. The pair sent themselves stumbling back up the stairs to pound and claw at the smooth backside of the door, but it was to no avail. The Captain and the Queen didn't even hear them shouting. 

They gave up soon enough, just as their hands ached nastily from striking the door. There wasn't any way to go but down now. They grabbed each other's fingers and turned slowly on the stairs, checked the next step down with their toes, and began their decent again. It wasn't nearly so swift as the last set had been; they had no idea how many stairs they had covered and how many more were left, but it was tedious and tiresome to run the ball of the foot over the stair below them each time, to scope out it's integrity and whether it was even there. This was mostly the job of the taller twin, for his legs were longer and he was more difficult to topple if he slipped. 

He began to notice something off about the stairs. On this one, there was a dent on the middle of the left side. On the next, a dent in the middle of the right. They alternated perfectly like footsteps, on stairs that had been traversed for a hundred years, or even more. There were steps like that on the island in village ruins, where all that was left of some terrible tribe that had come before the Piccaninies was the rising steps of a temple, worn down and covered over with bramble. The faries said it was the remains of the little city of Eldorado, or something like that; a condensed little place that had flowed with spanish children when they dreamed, some three hundred years ago. It hadn't lasted long. The children had left and the people had vanished, and the remains of the city were cannibalized by the rest of the island overnight. Nothing dead ever lasted long in Neverland. 

If they listened carefully past their breathing (which seemed so awfully loud in the dark) and ignord the echoing pat of their feet, another sound began to play beneath them both. It shushed past them through the walls in a constant, heated rush, and when they but their hands out to steady themselves it burned in patches and veins. They soon became aware of another sound. 

Snoring. 

What in the world could be snoring this far down in the ground? (if indeed they were as deep as they thought they were) With their luck it would be the King of the Worms, or something equally large and nasty; though they supposed it wouldn't be so bad to have to meet a worm king, because what could he really do besides slime on them? Unless the King of the Worms had terrible teeth and leaked acid through his skin instead of slime! They both wrinkled up their faces as the thought occured to them simultaniously. They'd best hope it was something far less nasty than that! 

The snoring grew louder as they were forced to hop a step that had fallen through (though what it could have fallen through to they would really rather not imagine) and they became unhappily aware that the stone of the stairs was getting thinner. Would it get too thin to hold them? 

Fortunatly, it didn't come to that. The stairs leveled out quite abruptly and fed them into a wall of stone. Had they been more witless children they might have panicked at the feeling they were trapped, but these were the Twins, and they had wits aplenty in their odd little heads. Both splayed their arms in front of them and felt along the wall, finding it to lead off to the left where the ground began to drop. It went forward for a good thirty yards, then curled to the right, dropped down three stairs, and knotted itself up in an infuriating mess of turns and tangles that made the twins want to scream with frustration at the thing. 

With no warning at all, there was light. 

They blinked furiously as their eyes adjusted to the brightness (it was, in fact, only the dimness of twilight that they saw, but to their eyes that had been stretched to the fullest in the dark, it might as well have been the noon day sun). The snoring had become louder now, so deep that they couldn't imagine a pair of lungs large enough to produce that noise (except maybe Captain Hook) and it seemed terribly close. Both sniffed and forced their eyes to open. 

The cavern they had wandered into was larger that the hull of the Jolly Roger. It's height tapered off into corroded vaults that webbed with glass piping, which ran down the walls in clumsy curves and met with new sources along the way. They all trickled with yellowish, gritty water that looked unpleasant. In tight rows of two, four feet from the floor and again at forty feet, were stone basins stuck to the wall with iron pegs. It was from these which came the light. Each one sat with a belly full of something that glowed gently. The larger twin curiously stuck his fingers into the one nearby, and they came out coated with luminescent liquid. It did not burn and didn't sting, but it felt cold like the back of a poison toad. He wiped it off on the edge of the basin just to be safe. 

"What do you suppose is in there?" the white twin shouted over the snoring, pointing. His brother looked up to see. Stuck in the walls at intervals were enormous metal sheets with gothic points; so large he hadn't even realized they were doors. Each one had a smaller, boy sized door inset at the bottom. 

"Maybe the worm king is in there!" he yelped, and his brother grabbed hold of his hand. It was still silly. How could a worm snore? 

Of course, if most people suspected that the doors before them led to the terrible monsterous Worm King, with dripping fangs and acidic slime, they would avoid opening those doors. But these were children, and boys to boot, and they couldn't resist the pull of it. Twining their fingers together, they crept forward to the first door. 

It wasn't an impressive door. It was dented, thick, scratched, and the handle and it's surroundings were smudged with crackled stains of something old and biological. The pointless decorative curves at the fittings of the handle were caked thickly, and neither boy really wanted to touch it, but a long game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (they kept picking the same ones) meant the smallest twin had to open it. He grabbed the handle and pulled, but it took their combined strengths to budge the whining metal anyway. They wiped their hands on their trouser legs in disgust and stuck their heads into the room. 

This wasn't where the snoring was coming from. All this room contained was boxes; cabinets, really, or perhaps lockers. The twins had never seen the latter two and so couldn't give an accurate word. They were irregularly shaped but a generally constant height, with doors that were wide and well fit. This room had again been made in mind with massive proportions, but the cabinets were arranged neatly in the middle, in two rows of four with a large space between the two. They gave the ramshakle impression of a shanty town made from cannibalized parts. 

The Twins knew the doors to the cabinets wouldn't open before they even tried them, though they did try. Stressed iron poles were wrapped around the middle of them like string on a package, and they looked like they had been there for a very long time. One was new, though. It's base was surrounded by a flaking of rust, and the red lines of where the iron had once been were visible beside the new wrapping. 

There was a smudged palm print of rust on the front of the cabinet. 

No. It wasn't rust. It was crusted and flaking, darkening into the same color that had been on the door handle. But this was newer. It was redder. 

It was blood. 

The abstract notions of their What-If game suddenly seemed all too real. There wasn't REALLY supposed to be a monster under the ground, not a real monster, anyway. There was supposed to be some vast snoring Behemoth with the temperment of a kitten, because one must always reinforce the reccuring moral that appearances can be deceiving. There wasn't supposed to be any blood! 

Honest fright began to seep upwards from their bellies and their fingers clenched tight, leaving red half-moon prints on their skin from each other's nails. The black twin leaned closer and, unable to help himself, scratched at the flaking blood to make sure it was real. He could hear his fingertip rasping against the corroded metal sheet. 

Something inside the cabinet lashed out. They couldn't help themselves now; they screamed, shrilly like only children can scream, and bolted towards the door. As they turned and pushed the metal entrance shut behind them they didn't hear that the snoring had stopped in a startled grunt, but as they leaned their backs against it and puffed, the whine of iron hinges made itself known over their pulses as one of the terrible, enormous doors pushed open into the room. Out came a paw, then forty feet from the ground came a blunt muzzle that brimmed with teeth and horn. It turned it's scaly skull to the side and looked down at them with one misproportioned eye that was thick and yellow and scarred about the lids. 

They didn't wait for the rest of it. They shrieked and ran in the other direction towards the end of the chamber; to a wall they had only one door, and that was boy sized. They wretched it open, fell in, and clacked it shut hard behind them. The beast's footsteps scratched the stone and they could feel it's great muzzle snuff against the foot of the door. It whined, grumbled, and the light from under the door vanished as it sat down to wait. 

They were trapped. 


	4. A story and a decision

Murhedd's Valley -- Chapter 4 

The earth had begun to suckle it's mud and the glossiness was gone from the soil. Torch aloft, it felt as though the universe had become nothing but a shifting sphere that glinted with flashes of orange colored leaves and branches as they passed by below. The moon had been consumed by a cloud like a muddy dragon and now shone weakly from it's belly, giving no light or guidance to the group that huddled uncomfortably in the light. Ever and on, Wendy filled her tiny lungs and shouted out for Michael, or Peter, or sometimes even for Jason (though she knew by now that wasn't really his name). Toodles, Slightly, and Curly tried to keep an eye out for them, but the ever present glow of the torch destroyed whatever chance they had of adjusting to the darkness. 

It was a bad idea, having a light that showed the rest of the world where they were, but didn't let them see. Had they been brighter they might have doused it and kept on their own, but they were only children, despite their independence, and with frayed nerves they couldn't bear the terrible darkness alone. No one answered Wendy's calls, but things looked on from outside the ring of torch light, things with black eyes that glistened in the fire like the backs of spoons, and some eyes that seemed to consume it. Sometimes, as they passed over certain trees, the glowing selves of fairies would poke their heads out of their shelter and glare, causing abstract patterns out of the corner of the eye of bits of light and bells. 

"Michael!" Wendy bellowed. Her voice came back to her in a mocking echo. 

"Wendy, that may not be such a good idea now." Toodles said nervous, shifting towards the torch. "We're almost at the mountains. Big ugly things live in the mountains at night." 

"There's nothing there in the dark that isn't there in the light." Wendy recited, but she didn't really believe it. Many terrible things are there in the darkness when you can't see them, and the same was doubly true in Neverland, for there lived all the things that you can't convince yourself aren't there when the night light goes out. 

Wendy called again. This time there came an answer; a shrill bellow in the trees that shook the fibers of the leaves and all the wet organs in the bellies of the listener. Wendy made a terrible little noise and clung onto Slightly's arm. She was frightened and worried and jittery, and if she didn't hear a human answer to her calls quite soon she thought she was going to cry. At this point she even would have been glad to hear 'Jason', because it meant the island wasn't wholly bestial in the night, and the world still existed outside the fire. 

Entirely loathsome of what she might hear, Wendy tried once more for Peter. 

They thought, at first, they heard nothing; only the distant movement of trees, but after a moment a colorful glow of fairy light shown itself in the distance, and Wendy felt her heart lift. It was the amiable pink glow that Tinkerbell bore, and as it drifted slowly forward they could see lines of something larger beside it, something upright and stronger and boy shaped. Peter and Tink! They were back! Wendy let out a joyful shout and rushed forward into the darkness to greet them, but as the boys followed the fairy glow turned an ugly shade of gold, and the faint voices were interrupted by an avian shriek and the sounds and shadows of flapping wings. 

"Don't rush the Queen!" a not-quite-normal voice shouted over the distance, trying to sound authoritative. "She'll meet the subjects ONE AT A TIME, if you PLEASE, and keep your manners about you, she's a LADY!" 

"Stop flapping, I can't hold on!" snapped a familiar voice. Was it Nibs? True as he said, the winged thing that had been held before him slipped, yelped, and went crashing down into the trees below to get caught in the twines of the branches. The fairy dove in after him. 

"Nibs?! Is that you!?" Wendy called. He looked up and, they imagined, squinted into the light. 

"Wendy?" 

"It is you!" she exclaimed happily, and rushed in to hug him, scold him gently for not having come home with the others, and pick a stubborn tree leaf out of his hair. They quite nearly forgot the thing that he'd dropped except for Toodles had drifted down to investigate. In a hole punched in the canopy a rather large and muddy bird was sprawled spread on it's back on a tree branch, with it's feet up in the air and a fussing little fairy hovering over his head. It didn't look hurt but it did look rather disoriented, as it kept muttering that it didn't WANT to wear a cumber bun to the dance because that would look silly without any trousers. What a cumber bun was or why anyone would want to put one on a bird was a bit above Toodles, but he did manage to make himself useful when the little fairy, failing to bring the bird to it's senses by pulling on it's crest, turned to him and demanded in very colorful language that he stop gawking and help the captain to his feet, or something unpleasant was going to happen to his face. He obeyed, and when the captain couldn't quite find the wits to stand, he fit very neatly under the boy's arm. 

Nibs looked startled when Toodles flew back up to them. "Oh! I'd forgotten about you! Are you allright?" he asked, leaning down into the Captain's face. The bird blinked and said drunkenly "You have a cat on your head." Nibs fingered his fur cap and scowled. 

"If you're done fraternizing, boy," the fairy began, tugging her sleeved huffily "would you make the introduction so we can get on with it! I have more to do in my life that chase around after little boys and deputies!" 

"These are the people I was taking you to see!" Nibs answered. He did not like the way the queen spoke to him. "Ma'am, this is Mother Wendy, Slightly, Curly, and Toodles. Wendy, Slightly, Curly, Toodles; this is Queen Mab, and the bird is Captain Partlet of the Flying Brigade." 

The Queen waved off Wendy's 'how-do-you-do'. "Yes, yes, lovely. Fine. Nibs, you said you were taking us to someone who could help us rescue the deputies! This sorry group doesn't look like they could move a brick, much less the door!" 

"Deputies?" Curly asked. Nibs nodded. He explained about the twins and the strange door at the foot of Crooked Mountain, where the briar patch had been. Most of it was verbatim from the queen herself. 

Poor Wendy looked about ready to pull her pretty hair out. This was usually the point in the adventure that she would appeal to Peter, who would of course know exactly what to do. At worst they might be out and about till the dawn and she'd have to put them all to bed, and make them stay there until noon, but they would all be safely home. It was a rare moment she found herself in the middle of an adventure (if she really dared call this an adventure, for it wasn't fun in the least) without anyone to turn to, and no hope of such a person arriving. 

"Well we can't all go and try to help the twins! Somebody has to keep looking for Jason and Michael! And we STILL haven't found Peter!" Curly exclaimed, the mess of it all starting to make his head hurt. 

Nibs looked confused. "Who's Jason?" 

"The boy who kidnapped Michael." Wendy replied mournfully, wringing her hands. "While all of you were out a boy came down Peter's tree and claimed to be lost, and I thought he was telling the truth! But he dropped Michael, and I told him to get out and he got angry and took him!" 

"What do you mean, took him?" Nibs asked. "He just walked away?" 

Curly scowled "No. Something he did made Wendy fall asleep. I tried to fight him but he did the same thing to me, and when we woke up Michael was gone." 

It didn't look like that explanation had clarified things much for Nibs. He frowned, and the Queen (who had repositioned herself onto Toodle's arm) brightened. 

"I've heard that story before! It used to be one of my favorites, I made the storyteller tell it every night when I was little." she said, seeming entirely oblivious to the situation. "Where did YOU hear it?" 

"It isn't a story!" Curly protested angrily "It happened! And we have to go find Michael before anything happens to him!" 

"Maybe you just think it happened." she said, waving her hand dismissivly. "You both said you fell asleep, right? Maybe you've heard the story before and just dreamed the whole thing." 

Wendy put up her hands before a shouting match could ensue. "Wait. Your highness, tell us the story." 

Curly blinked. "What?" 

"This is just slightly ridiculous." Slightly said "We have to go help the Twins!" 

"Hush!" she snapped, though she hadn't meant to. "Please tell us the story." 

Queen Mab looked pleased as a peacock to be the center of attention again, and she moved up to Toodle's shoulder to be in better view. 

"Well, I'm sure you must have heard it. Maybe you just don't remember it. It always starts on some dark night when you can't see, and it's usually raining, or snowing, or something like that, and a whole family is stuck inside their house until it clears. Just when the rains at it's worst a little human boy comes stumbling up to their home and falls down outside it, and for some reason the family always goes out to make sure he's okay. They always take him to a cave or a canopy or something where he'll dry off, and he pretends to be the sweetest creature in the world, until BAM!" She hit her palm with her fist. "Both the parents are out cold, and when they wake up, their children are gone." 

Captain Partlet cocked his head and looked at her with one eye. "When my friends told me that story when I was a kid, THEY always said that the boy sent their beaks back to the parents by post a week later. Didn't your version have that?" 

"No. Fairies don't have beaks." she said flatly. 

"Oh." 

It was quiet a moment. Wendy looked ill. 

"What happens to the children?" she asked quietly. The Queen shrugged. 

"I don't know. It's been a long time. But it's just a silly old story. It's not like it could REALLY happen." 

"But it did really happen! Michael's gone!" Wendy wailed. Her eyes were starting to tear up and she didn't like it in the least. 

Mab paused. "But you can't be serious. It's just a story!" 

Somewhere below in the trees there came the flapping of wings as a flock of birds startled from sleep. A dozen black darts came shooting up through the firelight with feather tips scraping the sides of faces and ribs, all screeching in a complex mesh of noise that no human ear could decipher. The Captain's eyes went wide. 

"Up! Go up! Now!" he shouted, kicking in a panic. Mab bolted immediately and the others followed, just in time that when something large and nasty propelled itself from the trees towards them it's teeth snapped shut just inches below Slightly's feet. It crashed back down into the canopy with a snarl and they could hear it's claws on the tree bark as it climbed for a second go. 

When the beastie reached the top of the tree, it look about in confusion and disappointment. It's dinner had flown away.   


With the luck the Twins had managed thus far, by all right when they slammed that door behind them they should have found themselves to be trapped in a closet. But it seemed that just this once tonight the Lady Luck had been a bit lax in her duties, and they found themselves instead in a warm, bright, and utterly confusing chamber. The ceiling of the room was perhaps only a foot or so above their heads and was stained with uneven flows of chemical smoke that broke off and drifted like cinders when they moved below. The air was dry and rather harsh against their eyes. It was undoubtedly due to the low perched chemical fires that lit the room, set at random spaces along the rounded corner between floor and wall, puffing thin and sickly smoke into the air. 

In the very center of the room, perched upon (oddly) five legs made from twisted scrap metal, was a cage of pulled and delicate glass. It was as wide as the span of their arms and only a foot deep, and made with close set and pointed rods of glass that distorted the vision and allowed little understanding of what was within. There obviously was something, though. Many somethings, in many different compartments, which shifted unhappily when the Twins drew near. They suspected, at this depth, that they would be moles, or perhaps mice. The smaller twin put his nose up against the bars and squinted while the older looked about hopelessly for an exit. 

Finally he turned back to his brother. "There's no door." he said pointlessly, and giggled, though it wasn't a sound to be associated with joy. He leaned his palms against the cage and stared at the glass rods intently. No matter how hard he focused on the shifting bodies in the box the hard breathing of the beast outside the door could be heard, accented by a rattle in it's lungs that wasn't from sickness. They had to find a plan. They needed something to distract the monster while they ran. But where could they run? This looked to be the only room in the set too small for it to squeeze into, and what chance did they have trying to fight it on it's own ground? And if they DID somehow get away, what good would it do them? The door to the outside world was sealed. They weren't even sure if the captain and the queen had had the wits to go for help! Or, even worse, would they CARE enough to? 

Something in the cage let out a shrill whine and the twins jumped back, startled. The whine echoed out in a dozen different tiny voices and little bits of something began to shove themselves through the bars, wiggling like caterpillar legs and threatening to get stuck between the close knit filaments. They were fingers. Tiny, tiny fingers, no bigger than a fairy's. They WERE fairies! When they pressed their little bodies to the glass the distortion lessened and the vague broken outlines of tiny people made themselves, separated into compartments two deep and high and several wide. Their shrill squeals were answered by a sudden silence on the other side of the guarded door. 

The twins froze, almost hoping that the monster had given up. The space of three heartbeats passed without a sound from it when in the absence the door suddenly shuddered and groaned as a great weight struck it from the outside. At once there was a terrible scrabbling of many claws and great puffing breath and rush of air as it snorted at the foot of the door, and at the edges between panel and wall the tips of thin bone scraped randomly in a horrible din that grated the nerves of the ear. The smaller twin yelped and pulled back from the doorway, striking his back against the wall of the glass cage and sending it toppling unhappily to the ground. The taffy pulled rods shattered in an explosion of prismatic glass and pricking shards and, before the last bits had even fallen to the stone, up shot nearly thirty tangled wrecks of shrieking, giggling fairy flesh that had long since lost their glow. They swarmed in a knot over the shattered prison and howled at each other, ripping their hair. 

To the mad, high chittering of a language they couldn't understand, the twins threw their arms over their heads to shield themselves, and soon found this was possibly the worst posture they could have taken. The moment they raised the defense against the cutting wings the knot dispersed in a spray of giggling darts, pulling, scratching, biting, twisting, clawing, and determined to blind the pair with their nails alone. They swatted at them in a panic but the little creatures seemed numb to pain, and flew back again with redoubled effort, drawing blood from the lobes of the ears. The black twin followed instinct and bolted for the door. 

If the fairies had not been quicker than them, they would have fallen right into the burning teeth of the creature and our story would take an undoubtable turn for the worst. Instead the monster opened it's horn rimmed jaw, it's scarred yellow eyes gleaming, and was met with a faceful of shrieking mad fairies. It stumbled backwards in surprise and the twins ran like mice beneath it's belly. 

As they wretched their weight against another door the twins dared a glance back to see the twisting thing they were running from. It stood on four thick legs ridged with bone and horn, with a bisected chest and frail waist like a hunting dog's. Along it's spine, in a series of impossible joints, three sets of claws jutted upwards and down as though they begged to be wings, and the three fingered claws snatched violently at the swarm of fairies, almost acting counter to the snapping mouth and twisting head. It's heavy tail ended in a tuft of bone that looked as sharp as if it had never been used. The twins heaved against the inset door and fell on their backsides when it's groaned open. A panicked check showed the room free of monsters. It contained, through no small imagination, the remains of a bedroom. There was a decayed mattress in a ruined frame shielded by yards and yards of red curtain, most of it already pulled down and cannibalized into other objects, and an enormous mess of what was formerly straw and fabric that had to have been a cushion bed large enough for the beast behind them The twins scuttled inside, slammed the door behind them, and jointly hauled across the heavy chain that connected a thick but inevitably ineffective bolt between the edge of the large door and the wall. 

There wasn't any way such a bolt would hold should the monster decide to ram it, and the twins knew it. However, their plan, which had formed simultaneously in their heads as they scanned the room for dangers, didn't need it to. They looked at each other to be sure the idea was shared, and for the first time in nearly an hour, they grinned. With lovely coordination the pair flew upwards to the distant ceiling and began to pull the curtain fabric down from it's lofty rings.   


"Slightly, Curly, you come with me to help get the twins out. Toodles, you stay with Wendy and keep looking for this Jason fellow." Nibs delegated authoritatively, falling into the role of leader a bit too easily. They waited now some thirty feet above the tree tops, in a stillness interrupted only by the frantic preening of Captain Partlet in an attempt to make his wings air worthy. Every few seconds he spat out a mouthful of sticky mud and went back to sucking it off his feathers. It wasn't pleasant to watch. 

"Now wait!" Wendy cried "We can't go yet! There's something bigger going on here and I think the Queen can tell us what it is!" 

Blank stares turned to Mab, who returned equally "What are you talking about? This place isn't even in my jurisdiction, I don't know what's going on any more than you do!" 

"Yes you do! You knew the story!" the girl insisted. "You have to be able to tell us something! Think about it." she began to count off on her fingers. "Firstly, this morning, Peter disappears without a trace and we still haven't seen a hair of him. Secondly, a door appeared at the foot of the mountain." She looked at Nibs pointedly "You know Peter wouldn't be able to stay away from it once he saw it. Thirdly, a boy comes down Peter's tree and kidnaps Michael. You know there wasn't really any legitimate way he could have come to Neverland. He isn't from the pirates and Peter certainly didn't bring him, though he seemed to know a very important fact only Peter himself would know." Wendy wiggled her fingers at the boys "That makes three. You know that after three times it's no longer just coincidence, don't you? These things all have something to do with each other, and probably mainly to do with either the door or the boy. And the Queen knew about the boy." 

"I did not know about the boy!" she huffed indignantly "I only said it reminded me of a story I heard when I was younger, nothing else." 

"But many stories are based in fact." Toodles said, catching on. "This one might be based in fact too." 

"Which means we're dealing with the fact behind the story. Exactly." Wendy said, feeling a little bit pleased with herself. 

Slightly frowned "But the whole thing is just slightly ridiculous! Any story the Queen heard when she was a child would have to be hundreds of years old--" 

"Hey!" 

"--and there just isn't any way that they could be the same boy!" 

Curly wrinkled his brow. "But we're in Neverland." 

And that seemed to settle it. 

The temporary leader drifted lower to Mab's level, and she crossed her arms. "What else can you tell us about that story?" he asked. The queen puffed at him. 

"I have more important things to remember than all of the insipid little details of a story I heard when I was a child. That's the job of a storyteller. Not a queen." 

"Then tell us where we can find a storyteller." 

The queen glowered at him. She felt that she was being treated quite unroyally, and wanted the Captain to interject on her behalf, but the poor fellow had a beakful of sulfur mud and couldn't even mutter a how-do-you-do. She looked at him pleadingly but his attention was taken by a particularly nasty spot of gunk beneath his secondaries, and he didn't see her. The Queen finally pouted and stomped her foot against Toodle's shoulder. "If you MUST, my sister would have a storyteller at her palace. But I tell you it's not a true story. It's just a drabble meant to scare little fairies away from humans." 

Wendy nodded "We'll have to take the chance." 

As they looked about to get their bearings for Small Monday Island, Nibs drifted in next to her and took her arm. "I hope you know what you're doing." 

"So do I." 


	5. Thwarting

Murhedd's Valley -- Chapter 5 

Scratching at the door takes on an entirely new dimension when the scratcher has eight free limbs with which to do it. In a few minutes it had degenerated into frustrated clawing at the hinges and ineffective gnawing at the door handle. It another few that, too, had changed, this time to goring at the hinge pins with a misaligned horn until, after becoming temporarily stuck in the crack between door and frame, the monster finally roared in frustration, turned it's quarters to the door, and kicked it with all the force it's bone studded leg had in it. The metal caved inward with a terrible shriek and the bolt chain snapped, flinging the twisted door open with such force that it slammed itself against the wall and shuddered the entire structure. Little veins of glass piping along the ceiling cracked and fell with a chorus of shattering chimes, followed by dripping trails of yellowed water that pattered around them like rain. 

The twins exchanged a coconspirital glance that was far from being noticed, and crouched down along the base of the rotted cushion. Before them, the monster turned himself around once more and nudged his head into the room, snuffing the air with it's flat nostrils and looking around suspiciously. It's eyes came to rest of the empty air once filled by the decaying mass of the bed curtains, and for a moment the twins had begun to worry that it hadn't seen them there at all. Fortunately, the beastie snorted and turned it's head in a continued search, scanning across the cushion. It glared at the disrupted interior, looking none the more empty for all the straw strewn out across the floor, before squinting down at their bodies, held in sharp contrast against the stained fabric behind them. 

There was a long moment where the twins were forced to wonder whether their plan was going to work after all. The monster looked at them, looked at the abandoned rings of the bed curtain, and twisted into the best mimicry of disapproval that could be managed with the disrupted muscle structure of it's face. What if it wasn't dumb enough to come inside? It tucked it's legs up under it's belly, squatted on them, and just stared at the twins with utter contempt as it's claws fought with each other to settle themselves along it's back. It wasn't going to fall for it! The boys looked at each other helplessly for a moment. The black twin stood up and waved an arm, the other held obviously behind his back. 

"Hey! Hey monster! Over here!" He bounced and tried to make himself the most obvious target he could, but it just continued to stare at them and didn't move an inch. The smaller twin caught on and tried as well, but no amount of bellowing or taunting could make it move from it's place in the door; in fact, it seemed all the more adamant of it's position the more noise they made. This entire ordeal would have been much easier if they had been confronted by a stupid monster that didn't know a trap when it saw one. That left one option. 

"We gotta make it mad." the smaller twin proclaimed. 

"Oh, what are we going to do, throw straw at it?" the other asked sarcastically. 

"I don't know! We have to think of something!" 

They did. 

"Hey, horse face!" the black twin shouted. "Your mother wears combat boots!" 

No effect. 

"He's kinda uglier than a horse..." the smaller twin remarked. "And you don't really know what his mother wears...." 

"Maybe she DOES wear combat boots." 

The white twin's turn. "If I were as ugly as you, I'd paint a face on my butt and learn to walk backwards!" he shouted. The monster blinked and flicked his tail with a very mild annoyance. The grate of the barbs scraping against the stone floor made them cringe. 

"Your so ugly, I bet when you mother saw you she put the diaper on your HEAD." the black twin called. At that the monster snorted and rested it's head on it's forepaws (though the image of repose was somewhat marred by the fact that two of his claws were still bickering for position along it's back.) 

They frowned "I really don't think it--" 

"--has a mother." 

"This isn't working." they both said at once. Then, also at once, a different idea came to them. If insults didn't work, how about something a little more drastic? They smirked at each other, then turned, bent over, and dropped their drawers. 

"Hey monster!" 

"Bite this!" 

The monster blinked, then, with a snarl, snapped up to it's feet. Snorting and growling, it lowered it's head and charged in after the twins. 

The boys let a startled yelp and took off into the air, still holding onto the ends of the torn curtain and managing to pull their trousers up in mid flight (it is really quite a feat to do both at once, especially when a large and nasty monster is after your backside). As they shot towards the dripping ceiling the slack came out of the rope they had made, snapping it up from under the straw and going taught some ten feet from the ground where it had been wrapped over support beams and furniture posts. It formed, essentially, a net, which the monster immediately tangled it's legs in and went crashing to the ground in a terrible heap. 

There was much snarling and whuffing but very little struggle as the twins quickly took up the spare cord from it's hiding place in the cushion and knotted it around every flailing limb the beastie had. Last of all they flew in quick loops to bind the terrible jaws shut. Bound, muzzled, and generally gotten the best of, the monster gave an impatient whine and put it's head on the ground. 

"That wasn't as hard as we thought it would be." the larger twin said. 

"I guess he isn't that bright after all." 

The monster gave them a pathetic expression and wagged it's tail. While wagging the tail is cute on a puppy, it has an entirely different effect when it's long as a tree and covered with barbs. The twins scurried out of it's range. 

"What do we do with it now?" they both asked each other at the same time. They blinked and said "I don't know! I asked you!" 

For some reason the puppy-dog expression to monster was carrying became wider eyed and cuter, and if it weren't for the fact the head itself was taller than they were, they might have had the urge to scratch behind it's ears (if it had ears). Tied up on it's belly, it looked hardly as terrifying as it had trying to eat them. 

"Aww, you're just a big puppy, aren't you." the white twin said, scratching it's chin. The monster squinched shut it's eyes and wagged it's whole backside happily. "Hey, it likes it!" 

Seeing that his brother wasn't immediately snapped it half, the black twin tentatively moved forward and rubbed between bone ridges on the monster's forehead. The monster started to purr. 

"Aww, your just a big puppy........ aren't you." came a bitterly mocking voice from the doorway. 

Leaned against the battered door frame, a large parcel wrapped up in bearskin at his feet, stood a rather pale, thin, nasty looking boy in ladies' button down boots. The monster, who had seemed so securely bound before, snapped the curtain rope as though it wasn't even there and skulked towards the boy with it's chin to the ground, eying him warily. It was a justified caution. The monster had no sooner come within range than the boy hit it on the nose as hard as he could, something cracking audibly in either the monster's snout of the boy's hand. The monster recoiled in it's shoulders with more surprise than anything, and the boy turned his glare towards the twins. 

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" he bellowed with a barely checked rage. His entire frame went into the words. "I didn't say you could come here! I didn't say you could come in my HOME! GET OUT!" 

"Hey!" one twin shouted indignantly "We haven't hurt anything! We only came down because--" 

"--Captain Partlet told us to, and the door slammed shut behind us!" 

"I DON'T CARE!" He raged back. "I told you to GET OUT!" 

"WE DON'T KNOW HOW!" the shouted back together, matching the boy's volume. 

Talking back was apparently the wrong thing to do. The pale boy came at them with his fists raised and they both took flight before he could touch them, hovering at the ceiling below the broken glass webbing of pipes. The boy below shot them a glare that should surely have melted them, and turned to the monster with a furious huff. 

"Tzesrikan!" 

The monster perked his neck to attention, eyes wide. 

"I want them down HERE, NOW!" 

There wasn't even time enough to put on a chase; the claws that flanked the monster's spine snapped up and out with no hesitation, snatching the twins around the waists. They shouted, kicked, and squirmed, but the armor plated tendons of the claws were stronger than they were. The monster dropped onto it's belly and matted down flat so it's claws could reach, and presented the twins to the boy. 

Both were promptly slapped with more force than was really necessary, and the boy glared, fuming. 

"I didn't say you could come in my home, and I didn't say you could touch Tzesrikan!" he snarled, jabbing a finger at their stinging faces. "I didn't say you could do anything!" They were both struck again, though this time with a closed fist, and much to their frustration they were unable to say anything in protestation or defense. The muscles of their bodies seemed to have simply...stopped working....and struggle as they might in their own minds their limbs and throats refused to respond. They could feel their pulses still beating in an unnaturally regulated rhythm, and their lungs filling evenly without their will or command behind them. It was as if someone had clipped the strings of the puppets. 

The boy turned his back on them and stormed to the door, snatching up the bundle of bearskin easily and tossing it over his back. A familiar little arm in a familiar pajama sleeve fell out through the side and dangled limply against his ribs. 

"I want all of them in boxes!" he was snapping, walking to the room of cabinets with exaggerated stride. The monster followed obediently. "Get RID of what's in there if there's no room!" 

A whuffing grunt came to the assent, and the twins passed through the greatness of the monster's door, held aloft sixty feet from the ground. The metal groaned shut behind them.   


All about the borders of Small Monday Island pairs of enormous, glistening eyes stared out from flat faces. All the children could see where the eerie gold and red refractions as innumerable feathered heads of all sizes swiveled on invisible bones to watch. Nibs gestured for the group to stop a small distance from the island. The shore they approached had become lined with a wall of staring eyes, in heads that gave no movement and no sound, but did not drift their gaze. Curly, who had been trusted with the torch for this leg of the adventure, pushed it forward towards the island, the glow barely illuminating at this distance the jumpy outlines and shadows of round, winged bodies. They were owls. The avians were perched on every stone and twig on this shore of the island, and more drifting in warily from the others. There were thick white snow owls, mysteriously masked barn owls, massive speckled horned owls, and a dozen other sorts in smaller sizes that seemed to be nothing but eyes on stunted legs. 

"Talk to them!" Mab hissed, tugging the feathers on Captain Partlet's (now relatively clean) back. He looked quite fuddled for a moment before puffing his feathers and putting on his most captainly appearance. 

"Ahoy there!" he shouted over the water. The owls gave no reaction. "I'm Captain Partlet of the Flying Brigade, and I am here with her Royal Majesty Queen Mab. We are in Neverland on official business from Lord Oberon and Queen Titania, and we need access to the palace! So please be so kind as to move apart and let us through." 

The owls were apparently not impressed. After a moment without response, a high voice shouted with much authority "Captain Partlet of the Flying Brigade and Her Royal Majesty Queen Mab, please approach the shore SLOWLY. The girl may accompany you! The boys of the party, please remove yourselves by no less than fifteen meters from the island!" 

"We're here with the Queen, too!" Curly answered indignantly, crossing his arms. "We're just here to see the storyteller!" 

"Boys..of...the party..." the voice repeated more slowly. "Please remove yourselves by no less than fifteen meters from the island!" 

"It's all right." Wendy assured quickly, smiling to the boys as she collected Captain Partlet and the Queen from Toodles. "We'll only be a little while." 

Nibs tried to protest, but Wendy tapped his chin to close his mouth. "I'm sure it's just a precaution." she said quickly. "It doesn't mean anything." 

"Be careful, Mother Wendy." Toodles called after her as she drifted from the torch light. The water below Wendy's feet reflected back unnerving hieroglyphs from Mab's careful green glow. The owls shifted back to leave a half circle of shore uncovered, onto which Wendy obligingly alighted, and was joined in only moments later by something that looked like a swollen sparrow. She set the Captain down on the sand, and he swaggered towards the little bird with the same air as he would approach a house finch of the Brigade. 

"Who's in charge here?" he asked condescendingly. "I won't let the Queen be passed off to some underrate lackey!" 

"I'm in charge." the flammulated owl said rather icily. Partlet's crest fell back along his head. "My name is GENERAL Tory of the His Royal Majesty's Night Watch, head of the Moonlight Militia, and second advisor to the council. I've been given strict orders not to let any human boys into Small Monday Island until the crisis is resolved, CAPTAIN." 

Partlet turned bright red across the cere and bowed to the general. "I'm sorry, General! I didn't mean to be disrespectful." 

"Of course you didn't." the general said flatly. 

The Queen would not stand for the Captain of her Flying Brigade to be cowled, and she landed on the ground between the two, arms crossed over her chest haughtily. "Well General, if you would be so kind as to tell us WHY no human boys are allowed on Small Monday Island?" 

This time it was the General's turn to bow, something he did with much more grace than Partlet had, likely due to the fact he stood in relative proportion to his object. "Your Highness." he said, touching his ear tufts to the ground. "The Council of Advisors has warned us of a threat to the fairy population, and we are reacting to that threat as best we know how. Until the threat is eliminated, no human boys are allowed access to Small Monday Island." 

"What is the threat?" 

The general winced. "I can't tell you that." 

"Excuse me." Wendy interrupted, feeling ever so much like a stone or a tree as she was too large to be incorporated into these going ons. She gave a quick curtsy and got down on her knees in the sand to have a better angle "General, does this threat have anything to do with a pale boy, about my height? Named Murhedd?" 

His lack of reaction seemed suspicious. "I'm sorry, miss, I can't tell you that." 

"General, do you even KNOW what the threat is?!" Mab snapped at him. General Tory flattened down his feathers. 

"It's Neverland business, Your Majesty." he said. 

"He doesn't know anything." Mab concluded, and apparently correctly, for the tiny owl fluffed itself up again to a size that wasn't even imposing to someone so small as Mab and said nothing. 

Captain Partlet perked a bit. "Does anyone know what the threat is?" he called to the assembled watch. "Come now, speak up! Do any of you know what you're guarding against!" 

A hundred heads pivoted to look at one another, but no one spoke. Eventually they all turned to stare blankly at the captain. 

"Excuse me, General Tory, but we can't wait for this." Wendy said, sounding politely impatient. "My little bother Michael is in trouble, and so is Peter and the Twins. We HAVE to find out what's going on. Now will your watch please let us through?" 

The general puffed his cheeks "I'm sorry, miss, but I can't do that. The council made it's orders very clear; no human boys." 

Wendy made a frustrated little noise "Well will you let US through? The Queen, the Captain, and myself? The Queen and the Captain aren't human, and I'm not a boy, so the council didn't say we couldn't come in!" 

"Her Highness may go in, certainly. She's always welcome on Small Monday Island." he looked critically at Captain Partlet "Though I really think the captain would be better suited to stay here and see how REAL soldiers do their work, and not the silly sparrows and pigeons of the Flying Brigade." 

Partlet puffed and stared with stupefied indignation, unable to get out one good definite comeback to the General's obvious disregard. 

"I'm quite fond of my brigade, thank you!" Queen Mab snapped angrily. "And you have no right to insult my brigade, any more than t insult my captain! Now if you're quite done making a complete ass of yourself in front of your precious Watch, kindly tell your owls to get themselves off their feathered butts and let us through!" 

Now it was the general's turn to look flustered, and Captain Partlet smirked with the unspoken but well heard comment of "So there!" General Tory gave a puff and gestured to his Night Watch with a wing and a shake of the tail. The owls fluttered and waddled into two rows, leaving a neat, simple path into the interior of Small Monday Island. Captain Partlet waddled down it's length with an unbearably smug look on his face. The general glared at him. Mab glared back. 

Wendy turned from the island and put her hands around her mouth. "We have to go in alone!" she shouted out to the boys. "Wait here! I'll be right back!" 

The boys called back an acknowledgment and she waved to them smartly before turning to the path, and walking into the darkness of Small Monday Island. 

General Tory sat on the sand for a moment puffed like a bowl of cream. He was rather painfully aware that a hundred bright eyes were staring at him from their places in the line, and after a moment, he shouted with a blushed red cere "What are you all looking at! Get back to your posts, hop to!" 

The owls scattered, hiding snickers behind their wings.   


It had never occurred to Wendy before that a place like Small Monday Island could be shut into so clean a fortress. Every time she had visited it, the island had been open and bright, and inviting in appearance if not in manner. Now it seemed far too militaristic for her tastes. All the homes were blocked with maple bark shutters against the dark and wet, and the only fairy lights present were the armored glow of sentinel guards scattered here and there along the paths. Even Partlet seemed rather unnerved by the quiet of it all. She never actually saw him flinch, though, until a helmed guard riding a bridled badger passed by them within a few inches of the bird. She supposed it was a wise thing not to like badgers at his size. 

The palace was seated in what was generally decided to be the center of the island, though it was actually a great deal to the right of the center, but the fairies liked to pretend it was. It was a marvelous thing made of twigs and leaves and branches all tapped with the midas touch, with pretty little pebbles and some genuinely mystifying objects set into the arch work. There was a high tower overlooking the courtyard that had a gentleman's pocket watch set in the top (though it had long ago run down, which was fine with everyone, for the fairies really didn't need to know what time it was, anyway). Wendy was, of course, far to large for any of it. She never felt so much the giant as on Small Monday Island. 

They'd only gotten within a few yards of the palace grounds when two very large and nasty looking badgers sat down in their paths. They had beech bark armor held onto their flanks and foreheads with twine, and a fairy guard in similar trapping sitting on their posteriors, looking rather sore from riding a badger. 

Mab's temper had been worn through quite nearly by General Tory and his Night Watch, and the badger guards had barely raised their spears and opened their mouths to ask their business when she flitted up into their faces with her hands on her hips, glow turning a most dangerous red. 

"Look, you little rats, I'm QUEEN MAB of the western world's fairies and I want access to my sister's palace RIGHT NOW before I have you, the Night Watch, and your silly badgers hauled off to Kensignton to stand trial for obstructing royal duty!" she snapped. 

The badgers seemed far more terrified of the prospect than their riders did, and immediately stuck their tails between their legs and scuttled away from the irate fairy, despite their rider's protestations. 

"Smart badgers." Captain Partlet muttered. 

Queen Mab straightened up, her glow turned to a more docile silver, and she smoothed her hair back with a palm. "Shall we then?" she asked, gesturing to the gate. 

Wendy slipped around the free standing gate and knelt in front of the palace, knocking upon the tiny door with a single knuckle. A few second passed before it cracked open just an inch, and the tiniest little fairy she had ever seen, in the tiniest little maids apron, peeped outside at her, eyes going wide. 

"Excuse me, I know it's very late, but we need to see the story teller right away. It's an emergency." 

The little fairy stared at her, stared at the horizon (Which was gradually turning to pink), and turned up her nose at the trio. 

"No visitors this morning! The Storyteller isn't feeling well!" 

And shut the door in Wendy's face. 


	6. The Storyteller

Murhedd's Valley -- Chapter 6 

Putting your foot in the door should not be used as a literal term when one does not wear shoes. Captain Partlet did not realize this fact until the little maid slammed the door on them for a second time. Fancy talk and captainly persuasion had come to naught, but it did earn him one very fat toe, and a good ten seconds worth of hopping on one foot and whimpering. 

On the third attempt, Wendy, feeling no small amount of frustration welling in her gut, simply took hold of the little handles and pulled. The tiny lock snapped with hardly any effort at all, but unfortunately so did the hinges, and both panels came away in Wendy's hand. Directly inside the tiny opening, the maid stood with her jaw slack and eyes as wide as pennies (which is very wide indeed for a fairy). 

"Sorry." she said quickly, dropping the doors onto the ground. "NOW will you let us see the storyteller?" 

The maid stared for a moment, then turned on her heels in a panic and ran further into the palace, shrieking "There's a GIRL at the door!!! GRAMMA JESSI!!" 

Mab snorted and flitted down into the door. "Trust my sister to hire cowardly help." she said smugly. "Just be a minute." 

She vanished into the door. Captain Partlet stuck his head in after her, and a whole minute later (to the sounds of indignant protests from within the palace) the door to an upper balcony flung open. Out scurried the little maid, who was now as white as feather down, a pair of emerald colored beetles wearing gold collars, and an old fairy in a bathrobe looking tired, miffed, and generally unhappy at it all. Queen Mab strutted out beside her and stood with her arms crossed, looking entirely pleased with herself. Wendy tapped Captain Partlet on the rump to try and discretely tell him to stand up, but he startled, whacked his head on the ceiling of the entrance hall, and waddled backwards out of the doorway, rubbing his crest with a wing. 

"What was so important that it couldn't wait until the sun came up?" the old fairy asked, trying to smooth back her white hair into some semblance of decency. There was something odd about her. Wendy couldn't quite place what it was, though. 

"We're sorry, but it really is quite urgent." Wendy said, giving a polite curtsy. "We need to know something about a story." 

"Well at least you had the wits to come to the best." she said with a tired smile "But I still don't see why this couldn't have waited until the sun was up." 

"We need to know about the human boy who kidnaps children. The Queen was able to tell us a little bit of it, but I think it may be a matter of life or death!" Wendy said, probably using that phrase in the literal for the first time in her life. The storyteller frowned and knotted her bathrobe tie more tightly. 

"A human boy who steals children?" 

"Yes." the girl said with a nod. "He comes to their home pretending to need help, and once they give it to him he puts the parents to sleep and takes the children away." 

The storyteller had gone completely and utterly quiet. After a moment she raised her wary gaze to meet Wendy's face. 

"Why do you need to know about that?" she asked carefully. 

"Because the same thing happened to my little brother!" Wendy burst. "Peter went missing this morning, and tonight a boy came to the house and said he was lost out in the cold! I let him in and the next thing I know I'm waking up on the floor and Michael is gone! And now Nibs told me that the Twins are trapped at Crooked Mountain and I think you can tell us what's going on!" 

Much to her misery, Wendy found herself sniffling, and she swallowed and stretched her neck to try and keep it from getting worse. The storyteller looked at her blankly for a moment before dropping her head with a heavy sigh. "Already." she said softly, mournfully. "The boys only out a day and he's doing it already." 

"Doing WHAT? Tell me what you know!" The girl insisted. 

The story teller waved her hands. "Let me get dressed first. I'll put on my dress and we can move away from the palace, away from listening ears. I don't want the council to know what's going on." 

Mab looked startled "Why not? The council is the ruling body while my sister and her husband are gone. If it's so important that you have the city locked down, don't they need to know?" 

She shook her head "It's enough that they trust me to do what I tell them. They won't be able to handle what's happening, and I don't want them to try. Let someone else take care of him this time." She rubbed her forehead. "Maybe they'll do a better job than we did." 

Before Wendy could press her again, the storyteller swept back into the palace, followed quickly by the nervous little maid and the two emerald beetles. Mab looked after her with a confused tint to her glow. "This doesn't make any sense at all." she said. "Why would the council listen to that old woman if she won't even tell them what's going on? My sister would never put up with such foolishness if she were here!" 

"But she isn't here." Wendy pointed out. 

"Well, she should be. I have my own affairs to deal with, you know. Last thing I need is secrets and storytellers and two silly deputies that got themselves locked in a cave." 

With what seemed surprising speed, the storyteller reemerged to the balcony still buttoning the front of her pink dress (or was it a coat? It was impossible to be sure with fairy fashions). The maid followed with a metal crossbar in her hand. 

"Lets go to the eastern shore then, shall we?" she said briskly, gesturing with a hand to the beetles. They scuttled to stand side by side, the maid fitted the crossbar over their collars, and the story teller sat herself on it. "The Night Watch should be heading off soon, the Badger Knights will be taking their place. I'm sure they can be delayed for a few minutes." 

The beetles powered their wings and lifted the entire thing into the air, and it suddenly occurred to Wendy what was different about the storyteller. 

"You don't have any wings!" she exclaimed dumbly, putting a hand to her mouth. 

"Yes, I was aware of that. Thank you." the woman clipped back. 

She refused to say anything else on the short trip to the shore. Captain Partlet (who had been on ground level for the preceedings and thus feeling rather left out of the conversation) flew beneath her in the precaution that she might fall off the seat, but the maid was following with the same idea, and the two kept bungling each other's paths. 

It was a short trip (for Small Monday Island was indeed small) and they lighted on an accommodating stone as the sun finally pushed it's nose up over the horizon. The beetles, who were the most useful pets Wendy had ever seen anyone keep, immediately pushed themselves up behind the old woman and the queen and made chairs of themselves, while the girl sat neatly on the bare stone and the maid stood at the Captain's feet. The shore was strangely void of the Night Watch, and Wendy did not understand why this shore should be so unprotected while the other was thick with guards. But in only a moment a bark armored head stuck itself out of the trees and sniffed at them: they had reached the shore upon the changing of the guards. Mab shot the badger an awful glare and the poor thing turned it's tail and ran. 

The story of the night so far was repeated once more to the storyteller, who took it all in with a thoughtful nod and a stony turn of the mouth. When Wendy and the Queen had finished, she sighed once more and began to scratch the beetle behind it's antenna, much to it's pleasure. 

"I wish I could tell you something you wanted to hear." she said finally. The sky was shifting into blue. "I wish I could just tell you that your friends and your brother were all right, but that isn't any certainty anymore. It's been a very long time, you know, since I last met the boy. I'm rather afraid of what the years have done to him." The story teller sighed and patted the beetle finally, her eyes taking on a distant quality. "The story you want to hear begins a very, very long time ago." She began. "I was a very young girl, but I was an adult in my own mind, and I thought I knew all about the world and all the peoples in it. I was just like all the rest of us were back then; foolish, self centered, and unthinkingly cruel. We just didn't know any better. 

"I recall that it was winter and a very chilly morning when a several of my friends came back from a trip to the mainland, carrying a bundle between them. It's mother was dead, they said, and they had pried it from her frozen arms as she lay in the snow in the forest. I don't know if that was true, mind you, I think it more likely they stole him, but either way, that morning there came to live with us a real live human baby. It was the same as yourself taking on a puppy. 

"We called it "Murhedd". It means 'plaything' in the goblin tongue." 

The story teller stood and began to pace, her beetle keeping match at her heels. "We hadn't really thought ahead that he would grow. He kept needing more and more of everything; he learned to talk, even, and we thought that marvelous fun at first. At the novelty of speech, we gave him the gift of languages, so he should never have to learn more than one. We gave him all sorts of little power, things we never thought would amount to anything at all, but were entertaining to see him play tricks with. We gave him the power to put people to sleep just to see who he would torment. We let him control bodies. We weren't thinking! But how were we to know what he could really use them for? He was a pet! Pets don't have the wits to be evil!" She paused and rubbed her forehead again. At the stall the beetle pulled on her skirt, begging for attention, but she ignored it. 

"Problems didn't really arise until we realized out plaything was becoming too big." she continued. "We thought he should never stop growing! We didn't know that humans eventually stopped on their own at a certain point, so we decided to stop it for him. He was maybe ten years old at the time. He didn't seem to mind it at all at first, and I don't think he truly understood what we had done to him until many years later, when the Piccaninnies came to the island. Even then, I don't think he should have minded at all if we hadn't become bored with our pet. We lost interest in the games he played and the strange notions he had. We all found new toys to play with, and new games to keep, and Murhedd quietly just vanished into yesterday." 

She stopped again. Her listeners let the silence hang for a moment, before Wendy was forced to ask "Is that it? Is that all you can tell us?" 

The story teller shook her head. "No, though it would have been better if it were. Just because we stopped playing with him, doesn't mean he went away. There were nearly three years when I don't think anyone even said a simple word to him. He was just like a log, or a chair; he was too big to be a person, he was simply THERE. But it isn't enough for someone to just BE." she sighed. "It started with grasshoppers. 

"We didn't know what was happening at first, because it only happened every now and then, and even then it was only one or two. He took the legs off the grasshoppers. Simply pulled them off! Nobody paid it any attention because we didn't know that it was him, and it didn't seem to matter much anyway, I mean, they were only grasshoppers to us. But then he started on water frogs and toads and little garden snakes he's captured. He would do very strange things to them and just leave the bodies where they died so everyone could see. Surely by then we should have done something! 

"Murhedd got worse, he started to cut the tails off mice, and the heads of baby birds while they were still in the nests. Their mothers came to the the village in hysterics, demanding justice, but we didn't know what to do about him. We didn't even know what was wrong with him! Maybe all humans did these things! We all sat together and talked one evening, and decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. 

"We gave him a pet. 

"It was a strange thing that had been skulking about on the edges of carnivals and digging holes in the ground where we wanted to build. It was a nuisance! We thought if we gave the animal to him either he would kill it or it would kill him, and either way we had one less problem to deal with. We had NO idea that the thing we had given him was only a baby itself." 

"What WAS it you gave him?" Partlet asked, head cocked. 

The old woman frowned. "I honestly don't know. A piece of a dream, I suppose, something that didn't fade away with the morning light, though why it didn't go below with all the other nightmare things I can't say. Perhaps it just didn't know any better. In hindsight we were rather unthinking in the matter, because it had never even occurred to us that they might NOT hurt each other. Murhedd was so lonely and the beast was so young that they took to each other immensely, and after that you never saw them apart. We were rather proud of ourselves then, you know, because we had solved the problem anyway. Murhedd stopped hurting things. 

"We seemed to have bad luck with our choice of pets, though. The thing just kept getting bigger, and growing more claws, and teeth, and horns, and we almost did to it what we did to Murhedd, except that he seemed so pleased we hardly dared to. It became ENORMOUS. If I recall, the top of it's head was more than forty feet from the ground, and that's not even considering the arms that came from it's back. Disgusting thing. He loved it far too much for his own good, I think. 

"It seemed like the problem had been solved, though. But that lasted only until the Piccaninnies came to the island." 

She sat herself down on her beetle again, holding her chin in thought. The little maid came up beside her and scratched the beetle's head while they waited expectantly. 

"When we first heard they were on the island of course we all had to go look at them. Even Murhedd came, though how he'd heard of them in the first place I can't be sure, because he hadn't been near the fairy village in weeks. I remember that evening very well. The indians were setting up their camp in a clearing, over on the western corner of the island. The trees were filled with all manners of things, just sitting there, staring at them. I think they must have known we were there, but they did a most marvelous job of hiding it, if they did. I remember I was sitting on the branch of an ash tree, and I looked down below me, and leaning against the trunk was Murhedd, with the strangest expression I have ever seen on his face. To this day I can't quite find the word to describe it. Horror, I suppose? Maybe joy? Despair? He watched the human mothers with their human children, and didn't move from that spot, even after the rest of us grew bored with the newcomers and went home." There was an uncomfortable pause as she tapped her chin, eyes glazed with remembering. 

"I know that the next morning there was a fight. I wasn't there and I don't really know what was said, but Murhedd went storming away from the fairy village with tears on his face, and I didn't hear another noise from him for nearly a month. But then....one morning the Piccaninnies were searching the island from end to end, and everyone wanted to know what they were looking for. 

"They told us their children, some of them, were gone." 

"Murhedd stole them?" Wendy asked. 

The story teller shrugged. "We didn't know at first. But as the day wore on and the news circled the island, it seemed there was only one person unaccounted for that day, and the same person was nowhere to be found. Murhedd was simply gone. It took us...." She bit her lip. "far too long....to find him. Many children disappeared before we found his monster's tracks in the mud, and followed them back to a cave in the mountains." 

Wendy's eyes went very large "You mean under Crooked Mountain?! Where the twins are?!" 

She nodded uncomfortably. "I'm afraid so. But please, you have to understand. I know now we should have gotten rid of him that day, and I think it might of been a kindness of we had. But everything that had happened was our fault! We couldn't kill him for something that we ourselves had caused, but we couldn't let him loose. We...CONTAINED him. And far too late. From the things we saw in his home, it was obvious he had allready found a way to the mainland, and it wasn't only the redskins who were suffering him. We put up barriers. We sealed the door. We.....we lost a lot, when that door slammed shut. We had to close it before he came up after us! We held it as long as we could, you understand, but he had come to the top of the stair, and there were still many fairies and Piccaninnies down in the darkness with his monster. It...it was.....a sacrifice that had to be made." she said, fiddling her fingers nervously. 

"We covered the door with earth, and placed a keystone on the top to seal it off. As long as the stone was in place, they would not be able to break the walls or door and dig their way out. We grew a briar over the stone to protect it and we made the land around it dead and barren, so nothing would go near it. Something must have happened to the stone, today. Something to break the spell and reopen the valley. I-I thought Murhedd would come after the fairies that imprisoned him, or even the Piccaninnies, but he hasn't come near either of us yet. It seems he wants something else." 

"And what is that?" Mab asked. 

The old woman paused "I....I think he wanted Wendy." 

"ME?!" the girl yelped. "What could he possibly want with ME?" 

The shocked look the Queen was giving the storyteller caused her to quickly wave her hands "Oh, no! Nothing like what you're thinking! The story you knew, the one you came to me about? That was what he did to families on the mainland, HUMAN families. I only heard about it decades after the fact, but he went IN with the intention of taking their children. But it doesn't sound to me like that was what he intended when he came into your house last night. You had to become angry at him. You had to chase him away, to REJECT him from you. Do you think he would have reacted the same had you let him stay?" 

Wendy wavered, but shook her head. 

"He didn't want your boys this time." she said with a sad sort of smile. "He wanted Mother Wendy." 


	7. Lullaby and Descent

Murhedd's Valley -- Chapter 7 

The twin could hear him pacing. It wasn't so hard, as he struck the sides of the cabinets with his palm as he passed them on the way. One...two....on three, the black twin heard the side of his own cabinet pounded, and four. He had the awful suspicion that the fourth cabinet was the same one they themselves had inspected earlier, and really who was in it he didn't dare to guess, because he wouldn't like the answer. The boy was humming at a fevered pitch and the twin didn't recognize the song, but the few words that fell out of his mouth at random intervals sounded like a lullaby. 

"....don't cry-yyy..." he sang as he started back up the row. 

The moment the door of the cabinet had closed, the twin had found himself is possession of his body again. His pulse sped to an alarming rate and he wretched at his arms in their bindings, but whatever system of restraints the boy had devised inside the cabinet was well evolved. His arms were pinned separate along the top corners, and his legs along the back, feet not-quite-touching the floor even when he strained them. He could get no leverage to work himself loose. Worst was a dirty metal crook jammed back over his neck; it didn't strangle him, not quite, but it didn't let him speak, either, and his breath made a low wheezing sound when he forced air past the barrier. 

"..born to diiii-iiiieeee...." 

The monster, who had previously been only a quiet background noise of rattling breath and shifting flesh, whuffed and whined almost pleadingly. The pacing stopped. Footsteps were heard moving quickly away, followed by a startled yelp and a wet crack. The beast wailed (a sound that was flinch-worthy when magnified by the metal container) and started to whimper pathetically. 

"Shut up!" the boy bellowed. He seemed to only have two volumes, and this was the one he favored. 

The monster whined. 

"I said SHUT UP!" His voice had cracked on the third syllable (as well as something else, but if it was the same sort of crack as the last had been, the monster gave no shout of pain). 

It was completely silent for a moment. The twin wasn't sure he liked the silence anymore than the humming, and his pulse began to quicken as he mentally cursed the fact he couldn't see more than the barest sliver of light at the bottom of the cabinet door. He had no idea what was going on out there when they weren't making noise. 

It took long moments for him to realize that the silence was not entirely silent after all. A plaintive, pathetic sniffling was rising under the quiet, something that elevated into muffled sobbing as moments ticked past. It was a hoarse, unused sound, thick as chalk, and the twin was more confused than he had ever been. 

A low, muffled moan he barely interpreted crept into the cabinet. 

"Tzesrikan...! She sent me away!" 

The last word faded into a wail that stopped in a sob, and he could hear the monster shuffling on the stone. 

It was quiet for a very long time.   


The sky had gone from pink to blue in the slanted light of the early morning. "What's keeping those blasted badgers!" General Tory snapped, turning his black eyed glare on Colonel Cobby. 

Colonel Cobby shifted uncomfortably on her talons "I told the knights they had watch duty at the beach at the break of dawn, honest, sir!" 

"Then why aren't they HERE?" 

"Well the Sun Catcher Squadron is supposed to take their places on the island, maybe it's THEM who are late. You know how hard it is to get Captain Popper out of bed in the morning!" she hypothesized. 

"Never DID like that little merlin." Tory grumbled to himself. 

As though he'd been listening for his cue, a familiar shape came darting over the beach on pointed wings. "Top of the morning to you, General! Colonel!" Popper shouted down with his ridiculous affected accent. He landed on the sand next to the general and cocked his head towards the sea "There's a gaggle of boys out there, you know. Nasty looking lot. You want I should chase them off for you?" 

"No. They're waiting for someone." Tory grumbled. "What's going on back in town? Why aren't the badgers here yet!" 

"Well, that's sort of the problem, old boy." he said too cheerfully. "The Badger Knights won't leave their posts. They say there's some awful little fairy out on the eastern shore and they won't go near it till she's gone!" 

Colonel Cobby snickered, and Tory shook his head "Those Knights haven't got an inch of nerve between them." 

"Is it Queen Mab?" Cobby asked through her wing feathers. 

Captain Popper cocked his head "Little lady in a silver dress?" 

"That's the one! She came through here earlier, she told the General he was a--" 

"Colonel!" Tory shouted, puffing his feathers out in a fashion that WOULD have been menacing were he even a third the size of his great grey colonel. She cracked up and fell back on her rump, getting sand in her feathers. 

"I feel like I'm missing out on a right good joke here!" Captain Popper said over Colonel Cobby's laughter. 

"You are not!" the General puffed, getting quite red over the cere. "Colonel Cobby, I insist you stop this at once! COLONEL!" 

The general was entirely unaware of this fact, but when he became excessively agitated at something, he had the habit of shifting from one foot to the other, and combined with his overall puffed appearance and diminutive size his anger did nothing to stop the Colonel's laughter. If anything, it got worse. Cobby rolled onto her back and kicked her taloned feet in the air. Popper himself was having a hard time keeping a straight face at the moment, but he had the grace to cover his beak with his wing joints, eyes squinching nearly shut with the effort not to laugh. 

"I will not tolerate this degree of insubordination!" he sputtered. "Colonel, I order you to stop laughing at once!" 

"I'm s-s-s-sorry, sir!" she stuttered between outbursts, and tried to roll onto her feet, but the look the General was giving her was just too much and she didn't make it any further than laying with her chin in the sand. 

It was most fortunate for General Tory that Wendy chose this moment to come stumbling back out from the island, a silver queen, an avian captain, and a beetle mounted storyteller and her maid in tow. The general immediately deflated himself and gave a quick bow to the ladies. The colonel made it onto her feet. 

"Your majesty. Ladies." he said with a nod. "I trust you found what you are looking for?" 

"Yes, thank you." Wendy said automatically, though her face looked worried. She waved to the boys over the water, who perked up to alertness immediately (where previously they had been somewhere between either falling asleep or knocking the hats off each other's head for the boredom of it all). 

"Well?!" Nibs shouted over to her. 

"We have to go to Crooked Mountain!" she replied. "I'll explain on the way!" 

She turned and gave a little curtsey to the Storyteller and her maid. "Thank you, you've been very helpful." 

"That was the LEAST I could do." she answered curtly "But I plan on doing the MOST I can do." At Wendy's blank stare she elaborated. "I'm coming with you, and so is Rupert here." she gestured to her maid. The poor little thing went white. 

Captain Partlet snickered discreetly at a girl being named Rupert, something that earned him a smack on the back of the head from the Queen. 

"But ma'am, you said yourself it's dangerous!" 

The storyteller snorted "I'm seven hundred years old next spring! I think I can decide whether or not something to to dangerous for me! And besides," she lowered her voice "What happening is as much my fault as it is his. I'm the only one left who knew Murhedd when he was free. It's my duty to set things right." 

Wendy bit her lip but nodded assent. Her understanding of duty had changed a bit since coming to Neverland. 

Captain Popper cocked his head. "See here now! You ladies aren't going to do anything dangerous, are you? Without anyone to look after you?" 

"I'll be there! I'm captain of Her Royal Majesty's Flying Brigade!" Captain Partlet said indignantly. 

"Yes, I'm fairly certain Captain Popper covered you when he said 'you ladies'." Tory answered dryly. 

Captain Partlet puffed and looked to Mab for defense (she was, after all, the only one who outranked the General) but before she could work up a good yell, Wendy stepped between them all. 

"Excuse me, but we really don't have time for this!" she snapped. "The longer you waste time bickering, the better chance there is that Murhedd has done something awful to Peter and Michael and the Twins! So just come on, please!" 

Several faces blinked at her, except for Colonel Cobby, who cheered silently. 

"She is right, you know." the Storyteller said. "If we're going down after them we'd better do it quick as we can. There might be time yet to save the Twins and the youngest boy." 

Wendy didn't miss that she offered no hope on the life of Peter, who no doubt had been below the ground since morning of the day before. It was on that sickly note they turned to the sea and joined the Lost Boys for the flight to Crooked Mountain.   


The moment Queen Mab and the adventurers were out of sight, the bushes lining the beach rustled, and two armored badgers came slinking out to their posts. General Tory rubbed his head with a wing joint. "Damn fine thing, that. Bloody badgers." 

They looked over their shoulders at him sheepishly while Colonel Cobby snickered. 

"Knock that off, Cobby." 

"Yes sir, General Tory."   


"So let me see if I got this." Nibs said, frowning a little. "We're going to somehow open a stone door that's heavier than all of us, sneak down into the cave containing a forty foot monster and a murderous boy, and free a handful of prisoners we don't even know are alive or not?" 

Wendy sighed. "Basically, yes." 

"Sounds like a good plan to me!" Curly said. He looked like he wanted something to do with his hands, having dropped the torch once the sun came up. 

"Since when have we ever used a plan?" 

"Slightly never." 

The deadly side of the mountain was swift approaching and they could see the open wound the valley left in the briars. The Storyteller broke away from the group and dove down towards the thick, followed by her little maid and soon by the others, too. Wendy and the boys lighted in the mud by the door and Partlet on the branches of a thorn bush, ridden by the queen. The Storyteller brought herself to hover in front of the door for a moment, looking it up and down. 

"Well? How do we get it open?" Wendy asked, coming to stand by the Storyteller. 

"I'm not sure." she admitted. "Murhedd designed it and he was the one who built it. The last time we came here, all of us together opened it by magic. I'm not strong enough to do it on my own, though." She turned to look at the captain. "You've opened the door once already, haven't you? How did you do it?" 

"I, ah, pulled out the ring. It's over there." he pointed to a place in the mud with his beak. 

That wasn't something they could very well duplicate, since the cord and ring were now out and they had no way to wind them back up. That was probably a fail-safe, the Storyteller decided, working on a different mechanism in case the normal one broke down. But for the life of them they couldn't figure out what secret there was to opening this door. 

"What about the writing?" Mab asked finally, having yet to leave her perch on the Captain's back. "Can you read it? It might give us a hint." 

"It doesn't." she said flatly. "Why would Murhedd leave a hint? It isn't likely he'd forget how to open his own door!" 

But now the other's were curious. "What DOES it say?" Wendy asked. 

"It's a phonetic writing, it's sloppy, and it's senseless." she insisted, crossing her arms. "It doesn't do any good." 

"But what does it say?" Wendy asked again, more softly. 

The Storyteller sighed. "It says PER ME SI VA NE LA CITTA DOLENTE, PER ME SI VA NE L'ETTERNO DOLORE, PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE. LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE." 

Of course, neither Wendy nor the Lost Boys nor the Queen and her Captain knew what that meant. Mab shook her head. "That seals it. He's insane." 

"He's not insane!" The Storyteller shot back. "Er, well, he WASN'T, anyway." 

"Why don't we just try knocking?" Toodles interrupted. Everyone looked at him. 

"I slightly thought the point was for this Murhedd fellow NOT to know we're here." Slightly said, scratching his neck. 

"But when he comes up to answer the door, we can take him by surprise! He won't be expecting us!" Toodles defended. 

"He'd never hear it through the stone." The Storyteller said. She paused, and rubbed her chin. "Wait a minute, that might actually be an idea." 

"What, knocking?" Curly asked. "What good would it do?" 

"A lot, if I've thought this right. Look here, this last word on the bottom, CH'INTRATE. The symbols don't look quite like the others, does they. There's this little line that goes around them. They're separate from the rest of the stone." 

"So?" 

"So? CH'INTRATE! The last line of the verse is "Who here enter!" 

It was worth a shot, if anything. Curly knelt down in the mud and rapped on the symbols. The separated bit of stone retreated into the door. He grinned and pushed the panel the rest of the way. 

Something clicked and clattered inside, and the door complained as it opened once again, butting it's head against the mud wall and sticking half way. The air that came up from the maw was the same dead, uncirculated air that had wandered the cavern for who knew how many years. 

The Storyteller gestured to them to be quiet, and flew in first to guide the way. Rupert whimpered but followed obediently, trailed next by Wendy, Nibs, Slightly, Curly, and in finality Toodles, who carried Captain Partlet under his arm and the Queen on his shoulder, so the Captain would not have to hop each stair at a time. As the glow of the daylight world drifted further and further behind them, Toodles looked over his shoulder now and then to try and catch the final glimpse, until there was only wet refractions from the stairway's walls, then vague hints of possibilities, then nothing. 

Somehow, that made the darkness so much worse. 


	8. The Cavern Beneath the Stairs

Chapter 8   
When the Twins had descended the stairs, all they had seen was the darkness. For Wendy and the Lost Boys, however, the path was lit by fairy glow, which cast strange shadows on the walls as they walked. There had been thing written there, at intervals, scratched in the stone with care, but time and the passage of hands had erased them to nothing more than vague suggestions. 

"I don't think I like this place at all." Queen Mab said nervously, half hiding in Toodle's collar. 

"That's the way he meant you to feel." The Storyteller replied. "The last time I saw this place the corners were still raw, and the writing still fresh. Imagine being hauled down the stairs by someone like him, screaming for your Mother, and seeing these words! I don't think he understood that the children couldn't read, though." 

"What did the writing say?" Nibs asked. 

The Storyteller shook her head, setting teeth in her lip "It's been a long time since first I read them. But I know that they said things they hadn't any right to say." 

"It must have taken an awfully long time to do all this..." Wendy said softly, trailing her hands over the wall as she went and imagining she could read it. "Just how long was Murhedd free?" 

"Long enough." she said. "Just how long does it take a boy and a beast to build their own tomb? If you ever find the answer, that is something I'd like to know. I think it would take as many years as I've seen to do this on his own." 

"Then how did he do it? Who helped him?" Curly asked. 

The Storyteller looked back at them with an apologetic shrug. "I don't know." 

Below her, the glow of her fairy light failed to reflect back at her from the stair, and the Storyteller opened her mouth to shout a warning, but it was too late. Wendy had stepped down, and with a high shriek disappeared from view through the hole in the fallen through step. 

"WENDY!" 

Nibs jumped the stair and squatted down on the next, peering into the darkness while the other boys clustered on the stair above. They could see nothing. 

"WENDY! ARE YOU ALLRIGHT?" Nibs shouted. His voice didn't even echo back. 

When she spoke, her voice was trembling "I-I think so!" Wendy called back. "I flew before I hit the ground, but-but Nibs, I don't think there's anything down here!" 

Her voice sounded wrong, very faint and without the tremulous repeat far away sounds always have. Curly put his hand down into the gap. 

"Then there's nothing to worry about, Wendy! Just fly back to us!" 

"No, I mean there's NOTHING DOWN HERE!" Wendy voice had gone higher, with the shrill roughness that always comes when little girls are really and truly afraid of something; perhaps a fear of the dark and what skulked in it, or even worse, what didn't. "I don't think there are any walls! I can't even see the stair!" she called. 

Looking up a moment for an idea, Nibs grabbed Queen Mab off the shoulder of Toodles and thrust her down into hole. The fairy queen shouted obscenities at him and pounded on his fingers with her little fists. In her kicking she nearly lost one of her silver shoes down the hole. 

"I beg your pardon?! Let her go!" Partlet said indignantly. 

"In a minute! Wendy! Can you see Mab's light?" 

A pause. "Yes!" 

"Fly towards her!" 

A brief moment passed when all that could be heard was Queen Mab threatening to cut select pieces off of Nibs and sew them back on in the wrong places. But soon Wendy's pink dress became visible in the darkness, and a moment later, she was close enough to touch. The boys reached down to help pulled her from the stair and set her down carefully on the stone. Mab hexed an itch on Nibs' nose and flitted to hide behind Captain Partlet's neck, where she was appropriately fussed over. 

"Are you allright?" Curly asked. The girl startled, and immediately set to calm herself and mend her posture. 

"I-I think so." Wendy said. "What's down there?" 

The Storyteller frowned. "Nightmare Things. That's where they go, when the day comes for them. I don't suggest ever poking your nose around down there." 

Wendy nodded with wide eyes. The Lost boys hopped the missing step, and the trek continued.   


As it had for the twins, the stairs abruptly ended and led into sloping tunnels that twisted and turned, and lost all sense of direction. It seemed dimmer here. There were times when Wendy had to put her hands out to discern the walls. 

"Why is it getting darker?" she asked. 

"It shouldn't be. Rupert? Are you giving all the light you can?" The Storyteller asked. A pause. She turned around on her crossbar and looked back at them with a frown. "Rupert?" 

There was no answer. All present looked about themselves and squinted nervously for that fairy light, but the tiny little maid in her grey uniform was gone from them completely. 

"How did we miss that?" Nibs muttered, scratching his neck. 

The Storyteller sighed. "She's a maid, it's her job to go unnoticed, but not to disappear! Rupert!" 

Still, no one answered. 

Queen Mab tightened her hold on Partlet's feathers and looked about uneasily. "Allright, now I KNOW I don't like this place." 

In a shrill echo, a noise wormed it's way up the corridor to them, breaking over them as liquidly as ocean over stones and continuing on it's way. Toodles grabbed ahold of Wendy's skirt. It was a scream from below, a hysterical, theatrical call that ended in a wet noise, followed by a whuffing giggle, a slap, and a whine. 

"Yes, I would definitely say he knows we're here." The Storyteller said flatly.   


It's not always so bad a thing to find yourself in the company of fairies. It is, however, a terrible, bad, AWFUL thing to find yourself in the company of fairies who stuff you in a sack and fly off with your body swinging carelessly below them. It seemed quite a long ways they took her from the tunnel where she'd been abducted, and Rupert had enough time to herself to calm down, worry about what sorts of awful stains this bag was putting on her uniform (palace maids only got one!) and to notice the sack in which she swung smelled far too much like cellar mold. 

Why it should bother her more that her uniform might be stained than the fact strange creatures had just stuffed her in a sack and made off with her is anyone's guess, but the HeadMistress at the palace had always attributed her behaviors to having slept in the cleaning closet as a child, with the leaky jugs of ammonia and lye; and for the sake of convenience, we shall blame the cleaning closet as well. But whether or not this is really the case, Rupert was actually beginning to enjoy the ride when she was dropped unceremoniously onto the floor. 

Rupert didn't have a chance to worm her way free. She'd barely begun to search for the opening when the opening found itself for her, and the same pair of corded, brawny arms that had caught round her head in the passageway attempted the trick again. This is a terribly undignified way to grab hold of anyone, and she should have bitten him soundly for it, but unfortunately his arms were as dirty as they were big and she had no desire to get them in her mouth. Instead she kicked and whined and probably gave anyone in the room a fine flash of her 'dainty things' when she rolled up to try and kick him in the head (her arms didn't reach). The man that was holding her dropped her on her belly with a whuff and she jumped up, dusted herself, and scowled at him. 

There were six fairies all around her, and as usual, she was the smallest of them all. The room in which she found herself was rough hewn and clumsy, and in desperate need of a dusting, but she had a feeling she hadn't been kidnapped just to clean their room. They were not...healthy looking people. The most notable thing about them was that not a single one of them still glowed, and due to their initial dullness she was almost tempted to call them as gnomes, but they were too long limbed for all that. Every one of them looked old, and the impression wasn't helped by the dirt that had settled in the lines, and certainly not by ragged remains of their clothes that left far too little to the imagination. Rupert looked around herself and stuffed her hands into her apron pockets uncomfortably. 

"Umm....hi." 

One of the fairies lowered his face to her, and giggled. 

Rupert gulped.   


Noises had come again from the room outside the box, and this time the Twin knew he definitely didn't like it. He'd realized the Lost Boys had come for him not long after his captor had; there had been a silence in the sniffling, then a mumble, then a high an unfit squeal of laughter that didn't bear up to scrutiny. A moment later he heard the side of one of the cabinets being pounded. 

"Little Birdie!" he heard the boy shout, still pounding the metal. "Oh, Little Birdie! I can hear your friends in the hallway!" he sang. He stopped hitting the cabinet, and there came the muffled thump of something scrabbling the other side. "Oh, don't strain yourself Peter!" he taunted. "I might have to go behind and tighten your collar, and what a tragedy THAT would be!" 

It was quite obvious from his tone that the boy didn't think so. The scrabbling stopped. 

His voice softened suddenly into a theatrical false tenderness that felt like syrup being poured into the ear. "See what happens when you LIE to Murhedd?" he dripped. "If you'd told me the truth I never would have touched your friends, and they'd still be safe in their happy little home. But now...now they know where you are, and they're coming after you. And I can't have them wandering through my home unchecked, no, no more than I could have YOU doing it." He giggled. "We'll have to put our guests in BOXES, won't we, darling, BOXES so they can't run away? Boxes. Yes." 

The tone was nauseating. It occurred to the Twin that there was a very good chance this boy "wasn't quite right in the head". The Twin didn't know what that phrase meant but he'd heard Tinkerbell use it many a time, and it seemed to fit the situation. 

"You know, it could have been so much easier." the boy continued softly. His tone had dropped from his syrupy melodrama to something almost worse, because it sounded so very nearly sincere. "You could have just told me she wasn't really a mother. Told me she was making believe. I wouldn't have bothered her then." A pause. "I really don't like hurting girls so much...." 

The Twin heard the absent scratching of a fingernail on the cabinet door, a sniff, and sudden bright footsteps that were too broadly strided. 

"Well then!" Murhedd said, his voice forced into a strange cheerful measure that sounded so wrong on him. "I think it's time we make it known to our guests that their host will be with them shortly. What do you think, Tzesrikan? Should we flood the tunnels? Burn them out?" Tzesrikan gave a snort, and Murhedd laughed. "Of course it's all just prelude! But I'm sure the games will be all the more fun if the weak ones are dead, don't you think? And the dead ones have their own quiet pleasures." 

It was a show being staged for the prisoners, and the Twin knew it. No one could be this false and theatrical without an audience to play to. 

"You know, I might actually have a better idea than to flood them." Murhedd said with an audible smirk. "If we burn them or drown them, there might not be any to play with later! And then where's the fun of them?" There was a pause for effect, and he could hear the monster's skin rasping against itself as it shifted. "I think it's time to make use of our fairy friend, don't you? She must be getting awful bored and lonesome out there by herself." 

Again there came a scrabbling on the inside of a cabinet, and a wheezing groan that sounded as choked as the Twin was. Murhedd laughed. 

"Oh, don't worry your pretty little head, Peter! I'm not going to HURT her. Much. But fairy things get along very well with Nightmare Things, did you know that? It takes a lot of magic, but strong fairies can make the nightmare things do whatever they want. If I control the fairy, I control the nightmare things, see?" He paused. "And if the Tinker-thing burns out, that's okay. I only want to use her once." 

The Twin heard Peter choke himself. Murhedd laughed. 


	9. Nightmare Things

Chapter 9 

None of them were quite sure if they had really seen it. The troop of Lost Boys and their companions had been pressed to the wall as they skirted along, avoiding a patch of ground that looked suspiciously rotted and cracked, when something like a streak of electric pink went snipping past their heads and into the dark behind them. They paused and blinked at each other. 

"What was that?" Mab yelped. Partlet puffed up defensively. 

Nibs looked to the next with a furrowed brow "Was that Tinkerbell?" 

"I-I slightly don't know." Slightly admitted. "It could have been. But wouldn't she have stopped when she saw us?" 

"Maybe she didn't see us, she was going awfully fast." said Curly. 

Before the Storyteller could snap at them to move along again, there came another dancing echo, trickling down from the path they had traveled and forcing them all to look up, wide eyed. Wendy put her hand to her collar as the tell-tale crow of Peter Pan fell down from behind them. 

"PETER!" Wendy called, face suddenly lit. There were sounds of some confusion from the boys but Wendy shot past them into the darkness, ignoring the stone that powdered under her step. 

"Wendy, wait!" Nibs called after her, but she didn't obey. With a short puff of frustration he took off after her, followed obediently by the Lost Boys and therefor, the light. 

They caught up to Wendy's footsteps as she slowed to a halt in the black corridor, the light from a nervous and flying Mab bringing her dress to a flare of pink before them. Nibs bumbled to a stop only a few feet behind her, causing Curly, Slightly, and Toodles to plow into his backside and nearly send them all into a mess on the floor. As it was Toodles dropped Partlet, who landed on his beak, and puffed up indignantly as he waddled up beside Wendy to see what the fuss was about. The dash of pink light that had sent them all this way was drifting slowly back towards them, now obviously a fairy (and a rather pretty one too, he thought, though nowhere near as beauteous as his Queen was!). But this light was not alone. Trailing behind it by a good three feet and barely outlined in the shadows was the shape of a human boy. His steps made no sound against the stone. 

"Peter?" Wendy called out, the elation in her chest feeling suddenly pressed. For the briefest moment the light of Tinkerbell was reflected back in his eyes, smearing his shadowed skull with red before he surged into the fairy's light and came running towards Wendy, an enormous grin on his face. The girl shouted happily and met him halfway, throwing her arms around his neck and almost knocking him over. Peter laughed. 

"Peter, what's going on? We thought Murhedd had you! How did you escape? Are you allright?" Wendy sputtered. 

"Murhedd?" Peter wiggled out of Wendy's grasp and assumed his cockiest position, teeth showing as he grinned at the Lost Boys. "That pathetic thing? He couldn't have trapped me even if I wanted to be trapped! He's nothing but a rotting old mouse!" 

There was a moment when Peter laughed again, and it didn't sound quite right. The silent Tinkerbell twitched, flickered, and the laugh rose up into the correct key before cutting off abruptly. The silence therein smothered them like a down mattress and stretched into uncomfortable measures. 

"Something isn't right." Toodles whispered to Nibs unnecessarily. The boy's eyes flickered to him, then back to Peter. Peter Pan's face had dropped it's grin and he now stalked easily towards Slightly, bringing himself nose to nose with the boy and frowning. His eyes were too dark a color. Slightly felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle; no, something was definitely not right. 

"You're getting rather tall, aren't you, Slightly." Peter said coolly. Wendy didn't understand their reaction as all Curly, Nibs, and Slightly tensed up like startled rats. 

"Peter? What's that got to do with anything?" Slightly asked warily. He leaned back from Peter, who leaned forward equally to keep the distance. 

"You're getting rather TOO tall. You could almost be mistaken for a young man, couldn't you, Slightly, and not a boy at all." Peter's hand drifted down towards his belt where his dagger was dutifully hung. 

"This isn't any time for this..." Nibs said carefully. He tried to wedge the two apart but Peter ignored his second in command. 

Wendy gripped Peter's elbow, nervousness obvious in her voice. "Peter, what are you doing?" she asked. 

Peter turned his head, and grinned at her. His jaw split back to where his lips would not, and Wendy blinked, unsure whether or not she really saw the nubby ends of over-fat fly spawn speared into his gums. 

"I'm just thinning them out, Wendy." He said, his voice dripping down into the wrong key again. The place Wendy held onto suddenly felt soft and cold in her grasp, and she looked down at her hands. Peter's elbow had turned purple and barred, as though thick strips of muscle were seeping through the cloth, and as he pulled his arm away from her grasp the tissues loosened in her hands, splitting and writhing as the strands congealed into the segmented bodies of night crawlers. 

Wendy screamed. She threw the worms away from herself and frantically wiped her hand on her skirt; it seemed, however, that the situation had been catalyzed. At Wendy's scream, the knife came out from Peter's belt, and Slightly shouted and bolted into the dark. The thing that played at being Peter Pan went after him with a shrill and terrible crow two octaves too high. 

It was only a moments time, too short a time to shout or react, that the corridor exploded towards them like a darning egg being pushed through a sock. From the darkness where the stairs came something larger than was rightfully possible in these walls scurried on heavy claws, it's scales shrieking horribly against the stonework. It stopped mere inches behind the stationary Tinkerbell and no one was quite sure who shrieked this time, though it might very well have been Captain Partlet. The Crocodile stood heavy in the corridor, the stones stretching to accommodate her bulk, and the stench of rot and seaweed overcame them in an instant. Her scales were frayed and greying, her skin crackling over her snout and showing dry tissues within, and her eyes were white with death's blindness, though she herself was far from rictus. 

The Captain flared himself up valiantly in front of the offending crocodile, though the Queen pulled on his feathers and told him to quit being and idiot this INSTANT and run or she was going to bust him down to steward! The crocodile's jaw dropped open with the audible snap of cold tendons, and up from her convulsing gorge rose a flood of unwholesome creatures like vomit or blood. Out spilled slick purple night crawlers and the carapaced bodies of earwigs; twitching larva with skin oozing filth, eyeless rats who's bone shone through their fur, and sticky, long legged aracnia that pulled themselves from the vile like the vengeful from a shallow grave. 

Partlet's crest snapped flat and he snagged the Queen by her skirts, and flew off down the corridor towards god-knew-what at the other end. He wasn't long followed. 

"Bloody Hell!" The Storyteller could be heard screeching. "He's using her on the Nightmare Things! The fairy's controlling the Nightmare Things!" 

No one listened. Tinkerbell kept pace two yards behind them and so too did the tide of maggots and worms, with blind, stumbling rats at their head. Captain Partlet nearly struck the wall as a sharp turn and dip broke their way, and suddenly the fleeing bodies were ejected into the light of a vast and towering chamber, in which they were not alone. They stumbled to a halt as behind them the wave of foul things broke over the doorway and oozed out carelessly across the floor, worms and spiders twitching as the rats became caught in their combined muck. The Captain faltered and landed with a clumsy smack (though he was picked up by Toodles in strict automation, and neither the Captain nor a pale looking queen were going to complain.) 

Overshadowed by the enormous bulk of something taught and lipless, Slightly and the Peter Thing were scuffling on the ground, Peter gaining a definite upper hand. It didn't look much like Peter anymore; it's clothing and skin had meshed and become shiny, and the hair looked like it was painted on the skull. With a strength Peter did not posess it pinned Slightly on his belly and crushed his arms behind him with one hand, the other clamped over his mouth. The boy's hat had fallen off in the brief tussle and his matted hair stuck in odd directions. 

"My goodness, it's really quite amazing how much like RATS you people are." came a voice that was familiar and unwelcome. The boy they'd come in search of was leaned against the monster's paw, fiddling with the popped side seam on his breeches. "Where there's one, more will follow. Is that the saying, Pinwhistle? It's been a while since I've heard your lovely ditherings." he said flatly. He jerked his hand and one of the Storyteller's beetles abruptly froze in mid air, dropping down and sending his frantic partner into a spin. The Storyteller barely caught the bar in time for the remainder to lower them gracelessly to the stone. 

The beetles immediately shook away the bar and scuttled to hide behind her skirt. 

"Charming as you ever were, I see." She answered crisply as she smoothed her hair. Murhedd smirked. 

"I've been practicing." 

It was only mildly satisfying to watch the boy flinch back in surprise as Queen Mab, her glow gone a nasty shade of purple, shot to his face and hovered there mere inches from his nose. Her hands were on her hips and her head craned forward, and if it weren't for the fact she was still muddy at the corners from all the night's adventuring she would have looked like an angry nanny. 

"Now look here, you." she started, and her color began to shift red. "Two of MY deputies got LOCKED down here by your faulty door, and I want them back this very instant! They belong to me and my Flying Brigade and I won't have any second rate sociopath bringing them to harm!" 

"A second rate what?" he asked, face cracking in a grin. "I recognize no Flying Brigade and no authority from YOU. Do you really think I'm just going to hand them over?" 

"You most certainly will!" Captain Partlet interjected. "My boy, do you not realize you are speaking to Her Royal Majesty, Queen Mab? Millions follow her banner!" 

Murhedd scoffed "I don't." 

"Murhedd, you know why we're here!" Wendy interrupted the nasty exchange between the Queen and the boy. Her tone dropped considerably when it was apparent they were listening. "You know why we're here." she repeated. "We've come to get back Peter Pan and Michael and anyone else you've got tucked away down here. What's it going to take to make you let them go?" 

This was a surprisingly reasonable tone coming from Wendy, and Toodle's looked impressed. Murhedd, however, did not. 

"There's nothing you would give me that I want, little girl." He said bitterly. 

"What DO you want?" The Storyteller asked him 

"You know what I want, PINwhistle." He spat her name venomously. "I want what YOU took away and can't give back. So I can't HAVE what I want." Murhedd looked at Wendy with a mirthless smirk. "You understand the feeling. I can tell. It's not fun never getting what you want, is it." 

Wendy blinked, startled at him. "Well..NO....But even if you don't get what you want that doesn't give you the right to hurt innocent people!" 

"I have the right to do to them what they do to me!" 

"THEY HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO YOU!" Wendy shouted. "You're just acting spoiled!" 

Murhedd's face darkened and his hands closed. Wendy knew her negotiations were ruined. 

"Tzesrikan!" he snapped. The beast cocked his head to stare down with a yellow eye. "CATCH them ALL." 

Queen Mab swore. The monster whuffed and dropped it's legs till the ridge of it's chest hit the ground. The three-taloned arms hunched down over them to snatch the first to run, and there was little doubt he could have snatched them up like jacks had there not come from the ceiling a shower of glass and sulfuric grit as ten feet of water pipe exploded into the room. The monster jerked in surprise, and his intended targets scattered at a snapped order from Nibs. 

From the shattered pipe came a shrill and bouncing war cry, and no less than thirty dull fairies poured from the jagged lips in lieu of acidic waters. They swarmed upon the monster's head and he backed himself into the wall, flailing at them as they pricked at his face like angry mosquitoes. 

"NO!" she heard someone bellow, and Wendy thought it was Murhedd. "No fairies! I DIDN'T WANT FAIRIES!" 

Oddly enough, in the entire company who had no glow there was one tiny fairy who still did. She had the starched apron of her maid's uniform tied around her head like a headdress, and seemed to be having a marvelous time. 

Though the boy's followed suite and darted at the monster, Wendy shot in the air to the opposite side of the room and sought out their host. She saw no boy and no Tinkerbell, either, but she saw the tiniest movement as a door groaned shut below her, and she knew she had to go after the boy. She trusted her Lost Boys and the company they'd kept to take care of the monster; they had, after all, likely dealt with more monsters, villains, and creepers than any other boys their age, and she was proud of them for that. She flitted down to the door and hauled at the grimy handle. With her foot braced against the frame it creaked open, just enough for a little girl to slip through, and she did.   
  



	10. Final Loyalties and What is Due

Chapter 10 

The lighting in this room was covered save for Tinkerbell's flickering pink glow. Wendy stood at the doorway for a moment, her eyes trying to accommodate the darkness, and listened to the fluent cursing. She would have blushed if she'd understood half of it. 

"I didn't tell the fairies they could ruin it." he said, and the clatter of something metal reached her. "You heard me, didn't you, Tink? I didn't say they could come down." 

Tinkerbell did not respond. Wendy heard the Nightmare Thing shuffling and Tinkerbell followed it forward, until the barest form of the boy could be seen. He was hunched over a table, hands flitting over a strange tangle she couldn't see. The Nightmare Thing lifted Slightly in front of it in presentation (the boy had gone glassy and boneless as a rag doll, and for a moment Wendy feared that he was dead, but the erratic twitching of his eyelids claimed otherwise.) 

"I didn't ASK for him yet, did I?" Murhedd spat. A pause. The Nightmare Thing made a whining noise and he scoffed at it, but instead of hitting it, suddenly swore and dropped whatever metal thing he fumbled with to stick his fingers in his mouth. 

"God damn it, fairy, can't you get any brighter? I can't see what I'm doing." 

The glow increased. Wendy Darling could now see both figures relatively clearly now, and clapped her hands over her mouth, nearly giving herself away. 

The first item of startlement was what Murhedd seemed to be doing. The table he was hunched over was wooden and the bits she could see were rotting. At the visible corner was a heavy iron shackle set into the wood, and hints of other shadows sat at the other corners. Laid out atop of it was an array of strange instruments she had no way of identifying. Most were heavily caked with rust, but she identified among them at least two short, stubby knives, who's blades had rusted to the hilt. Even she could understand what the others had to be. 

The second cause of surprise was the Nightmare Thing itself. While she had expected to see in this room both Murhedd and the shiny, decaying mimicry of Peter Pan, she was instead met by TWO equally pale boys in equally outdated clothing, though the nightmare thing's was in a far greater state of decomposition. In this strange and somehow more frightening version his hair was gone from his head completely and his jaw hung at a broken angle, revealing toothlessness in his head. His eyes were both ruined and swollen with broken blood vessels, and his skin had broken to spot. What was this Nightmare Thing pretending? 

Murhedd glared at his morbidly aged double for a moment before sticking one of the knives calmly through the Nightmare's hand. It yelped and tore itself on the blade. 

"Knock...that...off." Murhedd said slowly. The doppleganger glared back but in the end had no say in the situation, for a muted flicker from Tinkerbell forced him back into the body of Peter Pan. The boy grumbled something about worthless dream-stuff and wiped the knife on Peter's cape. 

Behind her, Wendy could hear the noises of battle through the crack in the door. The monster made quite terrible noises and the boys' shouting over layered it, and she could not tell who was winning. The question did not even seem to trouble Murhedd. 

There wouldn't be any better time to confront him. Wendy knew this, but was also frightened of the prospect. It was not often she faced her enemies alone, especially with no reserves to call, and no way to protect herself. She took a deep breath to temper her courage and, head held high, face carefully composed, kicked the door shut behind her. Immediately Murhedd's head was up and his eyes were wide, mimicking a startled deer as perfectly as the night before. Now that he was listening for her presence it only took a moment before he had found the sound of her breathing. 

"Tinkerbell. Light." he snapped briskly. The fairy shot towards Wendy and suddenly the girl was awash in pink, though to the rest of the room she was blinded. 

Wendy set her shoulders. "Murhedd." she said by way of acknowledgment. 

"Wendy." he answered in kind. He was too quickly within her range of sight and his hands held tight behind his back. "Why did you follow me, Wendy. Don't you want to help your friends?" 

"My friends will do fine without me." she replied. 

"Ah. Just couldn't wait your turn then, hm? Well I'm not exactly set to accommodate you at the moment, but I'm sure that once I am, the blond boy won't mind letting you go ahead of him." 

"I didn't come here for your games, Murhedd. I want you to let them go." 

"Oh really. Well THATS certainly unexpected, isn't it." he deadpanned. "You aren't in a position to bargain, Wendy. I'll take what I want. That's all there is to it." 

"What if I have something you want more than the Lost Boys? Something to trade?" 

A pause. Murhedd's eyes narrowed to slits. "What could you possibly have that I wouldn't just as easily lift off your CORPSE." 

"This." 

Wendy, though her heart was faster than a panicked rabbit and her ribs had begun to sweat, threw her arms around Murhedd, forcing her eyes closed. Because of this she didn't see the terrified flicker across his face when he had realized her intent. For the tiniest of moments she felt muscles taught as stone under her arms, and the next, the back of her head cracked against the door and she fell to her knees on the flooring. Her vision flooded with a sharp pang of red. 

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" she heard him shriek. Wendy looked up despite the throbbing ache. Murhedd now had his back to the edge of the table (as far as he could retreat without going around) and his eyes were almost perfectly round in his head. His teeth were clenched and bared and his entire body was ridged, and despite the defensive hunch of his shoulders his ribs managed to heave far faster than they had any reason to. Wendy was momentarily dumbstruck: he was terrified. Of her. 

Though her head had yet to clear the girl pushed herself to her feet and took a tentative step closer. "Murhedd...what--" 

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" She froze in place before he pushed himself back onto the table, hurting himself on the instruments (or bringing himself the idea to grab one.) 

The noises of the fight, which had muffled greatly at the closing of the door, suddenly tapered and were met with a stone-shaking thud out in the gallery. Murhedd's eyes flickered. When after a few moments the sound did not resume Murhedd bolted past her like she was a poisonous snake and flung open the door. Wendy stood blinking, and didn't notice when the Peter Thing crept behind her. 

Tzesrikan hadn't captured any of the Lost Boys. In fact, the monster was currently laying with it's legs up in the air, all three Lost Boys rubbing it's belly under the bisection line. It made a contented whuffing sound and stretched. 

"Give it up, Murhedd! We beat your monster!" Nibs shouted down at the boy. The Lost Boys left their positions and hovered in front of Murhedd with Nibs at the point, ready to fly if attacked. (But how strange that there were only three: where had gone the Storyteller, the Queen, and her Captain? Wendy wondered if the monster had eaten them all) 

Tzesrikan gave a low whine and rolled over onto his belly to pout at the lost attention. 

Murhedd glared at them with his mouth pulled back into a snarl, each of his painful looking teeth glistening pinkly in the light. "You're not allowed to touch Tzesrikan! He's mine! MINE!" Murhedd's voice was shrill and cracking. His eyes gave Nibs the strangest impression of cracked eggs, the transparent whites dripping over his eyelids and down his chin. 

It took Nibs a scant second to formulate an intelligent response to that (which is really quite astounding, since few people alive could have found an intelligent response to that) but unfortunately we shall never know what that response was, for the moment his mouth opened he instead let out a yelp, and ducked a boney fist aimed for his nose. Curly caught hold of Murhedd's arm as the boy stumbled forward with the intent of twisting it behind him, but Murhedd let out an odd sounding cry of protest and jerked back before he regained his balance, sending himself and an unfortunately placed Toodles to the ground. 

A clumsy scuffle began. Wendy shouted for them to stop and moved to try and effect it, but she'd hardly taken a step when something sharp and bright cut against her ear and shot into the gallery. She jumped and covered the offended lobe with her hand, but when she turned her head instinctively to see where it had come from she realized just how close the Peter Thing was, and jumped back with a cry. It's eye sockets had begun to slide to the middle of it's head and it's nose flattened back until it was only a gap in the skin. It blinked at her and gave her a wide, wet grin, and rolled past her without a comment. 

Suddenly the fight was no longer three against one. Murhedd shouted something that sounded nearly obscene and the Lost Boys were wrapped by slick, greyish tentacles that ripped them into the air and covered their mouths over with it's slimy skin. Tzesrikan, now dwarfed in the cramped quarters, shoved himself into the opposite corner and covered his head with his claws. The Nightmare Thing had become massive and grey and slippery. At the end of it's head, where it's mouth should be, instead rose rows of twitching, prehensile whiskers, parted in the middle by a pair of wet eyes. A slit down the length of it's breast leaked a foul black fluid that carried with it all the offenses of a satin-lined coffin left two months in the earth, an old cat bursting with flyspawn Wendy had found beneath the porch last year, and the sweet, sick scent of a funeral parlor once the attendant had gone home. Wendy choked and covered her nose with both hands. 

"Murhedd, leave them alone, please!" she shouted at him in a voice that she hoped sounded authoritative, but in fact sounded only nasally from her blocked nose. 

"Oh, right, or what?!" his voice cracked over the great roiling noise of the Nightmare. "Or you'll do WHAT, exactly?! Have a fit?" 

Wendy couldn't have really said WHAT she expected to do, but she though maybe she could punch him if she had to. She'd seen Peter do it many times before and it didn't look that hard. However, she wasn't exactly sure she wanted to be hit in return. Murhedd turned to face her, hips to the side and arms akimbo, with a bitter, wet expression on his face. 

"There's nothing you CAN do, Wendy! You want to play poker but you haven't got the cards! Do you really think there's a damn thing you can do against an entire WORLD of Nightmares?" 

Wendy lifted her head up "You're wrong, Murhedd. You haven't got all the cards. You were afraid of me in the other room, and I think you're still afraid of me!" 

"Why would I be afraid of you!" he spat. "You're just a stupid, false thing! You're not even a real mother! Why should I be afraid of you, Wendy, tell me that!" 

"Because you're still crying!" 

Murhedd blinked, as though he hadn't noticed it before, and tried to dry his face with his sleeve. He looked so very much like a boy just then Wendy felt almost sorry for him, but the tiny step she took towards him caused him to jerk back and fix her with a glare unlike any she'd ever received before. 

"You ARE afraid of me!" She insisted. "I don't know WHY you're afraid of me, but you are!" 

"I am not!" 

To prove her point, Wendy walked towards him. He tensed but held his ground until she got within three feet of him, and which point he broke and stumbled back, falling onto his rump with a shout. Wendy knelt down by his ribs, her knees nearly touching him. Every muscle was ridged and every tendon pronounced; his eyes were dilated and red, and his fingers clutched into the stone beneath him spasmodically. 

No one had ever been afraid of Wendy Darling before. Some didn't like the feeling. 

"You're afraid of me." she said again, but softly this time. Behind, she could hear Tzesrikan shifting closer, a warning growl on his teeth. She didn't dare look back at him, though. 

"Murhedd, I want you to let the Lost Boys go." she said evenly. "I want you to let go any fairies, and redskins, any animals, anything at ALL you have trapped down here. Every single thing, Murhedd." 

He shook his head in a weak protest. 

"Yes, Murhedd. Everything." 

Wendy put a hand gently on his chest, and whatever small composure he had left shattered as he tried to scuttle away from her. He made it all of three feet before his shoulders hit the ground and he curled in on himself, sobbing against the fading floor. 

Tzesrikan's shadow broke the light. Wendy could feel the monster's breath on her back as he leaned in, warning her. 

She didn't look.   


The Twin heard the voices long before he saw the light. High, whispered, tiny voices, and the awkward inhuman sound of Captain Partlet's fawnings. He felt his pulse rise but he couldn't make a sound to call them, or warn them. There was the creak of metal, an enormous snap, and the whine of rusted hinges. They must be opening one of the cabinets. He waited to hear one of the Lost Boys tumble out and fall into a coughing fit, but instead there came a chorus of disgusted noises and the sound of the door being shut again. That couldn't be good. 

"...this one looks like it's been opened recently." he heard a crisp female voice state. He could see fairy glow along the gaps in the door. "The bar's been moved, see? Rupert, bring them here, lets pull this one open." 

"What if it's another....thing!" whined a second female. 

"We won't know until we open it!" snapped a third. It sounded like Queen Mab. "All of you, get off your skinny asses and help us open this one!" 

"You heard the Queen, hop to it!" Partlet chimed. There was a congregation of SOMETHING outside the door now. He heard the whine and shriek of metal again, so very much closer than it had been before, and the sides of the cabinet began to cave. Suddenly it ended in a pop, and the congregation scattered. 

"Ready yourselves." said the first female. 

The lighted edge of the door creaked open, inch by tiny inch, and the Twin squinted shut his eyes at the light. 

"This one's alive!" 

Some single person cheered. The door flew open and clattered as it's hinges fell away. Sitting square in the middle of the entrance was the familiar Captain Partlet with his bright red beak, and hovering above his head was Mab, who for likely the first time in her life had broken a sweat. At the top left corner was an elderly fairy in a blank pink dress sitting astride two beetles, and everywhere else about the entrance was the mad, unlit swarm, drifting in a lazy sphere around a tiny white fairy in a maid's uniform. 

"Are you quite allright there, Deputy Twin? Nothing broken, I expect" Partlet asked in a falsely boisterous voice. "Well are you going to stand there all day or aren't you coming out?" 

"He's tied in, you nitwit." said the fairy in the pink dress. "Rupert, send someone around to the back to loosen that collar. It ought to be on a screw, if it's the same ones." 

The little maid turned to whisper to the swarm. A few leaned close and nodded, then disappeared from sight behind the cabinet. A moment later metal squeaked against metal, and his collar pulled back all the tighter. 

"Other way, other way!" shouted the Queen. "You're choking my deputy! Incompetent weirdos." 

Metal squeaked again, and this time the collar loosened slowly. The twin gasped for air as soon as he was able, and even after he could rightfully talk just hung there for a moment, enjoying the pleasures of unobstructed breathing. 

"Allright then?" Partlet asked again. 

The twin nodded best he could. "Yes. Allright." Talking hurt. 

His arms and legs were held by buckles, which were easily slipped, and the Twin stumbled out unsteadily, holding the side of the cabinet for support. It took a few moments to get his bearings. 

The old fairy lighted her beetles on his shoulder and stepped off. "He didn't hurt you, did he. That's good. But we have to hurry, allright? We need you to help with the next cabinet. The other boys are distracting Murhedd's monster for us and we haven't got much time. Do you know which cabinets your friends are in?" 

He nodded. He didn't ask about the cabinet they had opened before his. When Tzesrikan had pulled open the boxes for them, they hadn't been entirely empty. He'd seen the monster put his claw into the boxes and crush their shadowed contents into dust, brushing away the fragments. The floor was awfully gritty here. He intentionally didn't think about it. 

They got the other twin out next. The metal wrap was stubborn but it was still just as old, and it snapped before their muscles did. They caught hold each other's hands the moment that they could, and did not let go until Mab forced them to, to help with the opening of Michael's cabinet. 

Finally there was Peter. They knew which one it had to be, and the ominous red stain on the door made them hesitant to open it. He didn't scrabble at the sides as he had when Murhedd had taunted him, and he didn't make a sound. The red stained cabinet was eerily silent. 

"Come on, then." the old fairy said, bolstering her courage. "Everyone, grab ahold. On the count of three. One, two, three!" 

The metal was weary and snapped too quickly, sending them all onto their backsides on the floor. Captain Partlet grabbed the edge of the cabinet door with his beak and pulled before anyone could loose nerve. 

Inside the cabinet, there was blood. 

But it hadn't come from Peter. 

Peter Pan was quite alive, and strung up like they all had been. The boy had been divested of his shirt and cape, and his belt where his sword had hung, and in the uneven light that seeped into the cabinet his bare torso was pale and painted. Dried, crackled red was drawn in a line from the top of his trousers to his chin, and even higher, so that his lips were painted with a dull red that he'd refused to lick away. The Twins began to compulsively loose his restraints, and before even talking or acknowledging them at all he scrubbed the back of his hand against his mouth and spat on the floor. 

"Where is he?" he growled, eyes snapping to the Twins with a most murderous glare. "I SAID, where IS HE!?" 

The Twins blinked, startled by his anger, and he shoved past them for the door when they didn't voice a reply. 

"Wait! Peter!" The elder fairy flew to stop him, but he'd already shoved open the door. The others had no choice but to follow.   


Wendy heard a door shriek open mere seconds before a familiar and unnerving voice bellowed into the gallery. Her head snapped around and her heart lifted at what she saw, to be immediately replaced by worry. 

"Peter! Oh Peter you're alive!" She untangled herself from a long-silent Murhedd, unclasping his arms from around her neck and ran towards Peter with her arms outstretched, catching him around the ribs and hugging him a bit too hard. She pulled back and quickly checked him up and down. "Peter, are you allright? Where's the blood come from?" 

"Ask him." Peter said icily. He pushed her gently to the side and stalked towards Murhedd with made fists. The boy blinked his leaking eyes and slowly scrambled from his place on the floor and under the chest of his attendant monster, falling over Tzesrikan's foreclaw and pressed his damp face to the bone. The monster immediately locked the other claw over him like a cage and lowered his head to Peter with a great whuffing snarl. 

A startled cry from Michael was the only thing that made Peter aware of the OTHER presence in the room, the vast, dripping, grey presence. Neither it nor Tinkerbell had moved from their places, and all Curly, Nibs, and Toodles were still held mute sixty feet above the ground, heads nearly touching the webbed ceiling. Peter flared. 

"Murhedd, LET THEM GO!" he shouted, tensing more, and if it weren't for the constant whuffing reminder of the monster's breathing he likely would have jumped him anyway. Murhedd's eyes rolled in the direction of the Nightmare and he lifted one shaking arm to gesture through the part in Tzesrikan's claws. Tinkerbell suddenly flickered and her wings stopped working; she fell through the air to land with a wet smack on the flank of the Nightmare Thing. The Nightmare itself blinked and looked startled at it's sudden freedom. After a wavered moment of indecision it picked Tinkerbell up with one grey tentacle and deposited her on the ledge of a lighting basin. Partlet was already on his way to the rescue when the Nightmare pressed itself to the ground and disappeared, leaving Curly, Nibs, and Toodles drifting in the air above. 

"There. They're free." Murhedd said blankly. He dropped his forehead against Tzesrikan's claw again and made no further comment. 

Peter was entirely confused. Wendy gently took hold of his elbow and tugged him towards the door. "Peter, please, lets go. No one is hurt. Just leave him be." 

"We can't do that unless we have the keystone." The Storyteller said matter-of-factly. "Without the keystone we can't seal the door, and I don't have enough power on my own to make another one." 

"Keystone?" Peter asked. 

"Yes. Something had to move it for the seal to be broken." she eyed him. "We used a diamond because it's the stongest stone. This big?" she gestured with her hands. Peter blinked. 

"Tink...Tink saw something sparkle in the briars. She went down to see what it was, and then....." he trailed off. "Where's Tink?" 

"I've got her!" Partlet answered, keeping his beak closed so not to drop her. He landed clumsily in front of Peter and the boy knelt down to take her from him. She looked up at her boy with bleary eyes and mumbled something at his worried expression, before falling back asleep against his fingers. 

"She's been used up, just let her rest." said the Storyteller. "Now Peter, what happened to the stone after Tink moved it? Where did it go?" 

"Murhedd took it, when he knocked her out." He shot Murhedd a venomous glare, but the only one who even noticed was Tzesrikan, who clicked his teeth at him. "He'd have it somewhere." 

"Oh, you can't mean to lock him down here again!" Wendy said finally, putting a hand to her chest "He hasn't hurt anybody, not really. Why not just leave him alone?" 

"Because he HAS hurt people and he WILL hurt people, Wendy." The Storyteller said gently. "It's for the best." She nudged the beetles towards the protective monster, waving it's head off as an annoyance when Tzesrikan tried to snarl at her. The beetles dropped her carefully on the bone talons by Murhedd's face and stood waiting beside her. 

"Give me the keystone, Murhedd." she said too softly. The boy closed his eyes and shook his head. 

"No. I won't give it to you. You owe me something, Pinwhistle." 

"I don't owe you your freedom." she said sternly. 

"...No. You don't owe me my freedom." he agreed. He shifted so one wet, empty eye could see her. "But you owe me something else." 

"Oh?" 

"Yes. Out of all the things you took from me, I just want one. One thing." He held up a finger. "Then you can have the key." 

"And what thing is that, Murhedd?" 

He stared at her with his vacant eye for a long moment, then rolled onto his back, folded his hands on his stomach, and closed his eyes. The Storyteller didn't move for several seconds before rubbing her forehead and gesturing her beetles over. They carried her faithfully back to the Lost Boys and company. 

"Well?" Mab asked her with her usual impatience. 

"He'll cooperate. He just needs something first." she answered softly. "Wendy, take your boys up the stairs, and Mab, you go too. Everyone go. Rupert, take take the other fairies with you. They need to come back with us to Small Monday Island." 

"But what are YOU going to do?" Rupert asked. 

"Does it matter? I'll be fine. Just all of you go. It will be allright." 

The Storyteller tapped Peter lightly on the bridge of the nose, leaving a faint glow of magic on his skin. The boy blinked and relaxed his fists, a blank expression in his eyes, like when Mrs. Darling was given a dose of laudanum. 

"Come on." he said faintly. "Lets go." 

Even under influence of magic, that would be the only time in his life Peter ever took an order.   


Wendy had forgotten the sun was shining. In the docile light of day, the door was only a door, and the briars that twisted and snatched around them were only plants. The Lost Boys had clumped themselves on a raised section of the valley, not really caring that they were sitting in the mud. Curly, Slightly (who had been so thoughtfully retrieved once Nibs had remembered him) and Nibs were leaned against a grimy stone, separated a few feet from Toodles, Michael, and the Twins, who were atop it. Rupert and her court had filled a briar bush, their wings glistening like flies in the sun. Mab sat quietly on a branch a few yards from them, Partlet waiting on the ground below her. Peter Pan had simply fallen against the mud wall, put his head back, and closed his eyes, and Wendy sat patiently beside him with her hand on his knee. 

When the mouth of the door was finally lit by a drifting glow, Wendy had nearly forgotten they were waiting. She nudged Peter, who slowly rolled his eyes to look at her. The Storyteller landed on the granite slab and fished her hand around for a catch on the bottom lip. Something inside the wall began to clank, and the stone grated harshly as it dropped the few feet to meet it's base. It was quiet. 

Wendy came to stand before the Storyteller, fingers twiddling and an anxious look on her face. 

"Hold out your hand, Wendy." The Storyteller said quietly. She fished in the pocket of her dress and fixed her fingers around a bulge and transferred it into Wendy's palm. The girl stared at it. It was a diamond the size of her thumbnail, worn on the faces and chipped here and there, but sparkling in the sun the way glass never could. 

"The keystone?" she asked. 

The Storyteller nodded. "Seven hundred years, Wendy." she added thoughtfully. 

"B-beg your pardon?" 

"What I asked earlier. When we were going down the stairs. How long does it take a boy and a beast to build their own tomb?" 

Wendy blinked, and closed her hand over the diamond. 

"Take you boys home, Wendy. See that they get some sleep. It's been a long night for everyone." 

"I-I will. Thank you." 

Mystified by the persistent pricking behind her eyes and writing it off to the glare of the sun, Wendy turned to her boys and held her arms out to them. 

"It's time to go home, boys. Come on. It's been a long night." 

No one argued. 


End file.
